Has cPanel Abandoned Service Providers

[jwogrady]

We are a marketing company that built a cPanel stack so we can more effectively host and support the websites we build. We charge low rates for high grade, fully-fuctional cPanel services. It's not a huge percentage of revenue, but the money we collect does help cover our IT infrastructure and support costs. More importantly, providing the service makes it easier to support our customers needs; people we all know personally.

Since cPanel was purchased by private equity I've noticed some very disturbing trends.

First, pricing has substantially increased. Support is still very responsive, but let's just say the experience has become a lot more "transactional".

Second, the WordPress Toolkit is essentially malware. You install it because you trust cPanel, but then you find out that cPanel plans to sell WP management services through that interface on the hardware you service and support. None of that is disclosed when you click the button to install. It's also not clear if WordPress Toolkit can cleanly be uninstalled.

I love cPanel. What's cPanel's plan for hosting resellers? Are we getting phased out? When you think about cPanel as an enduser product I think the answer is clear. cPanel has decided to leap over us and go direct. I would appreciate hearing an alternative perspective.

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! Thanks for bringing up these thoughts with us, as we're always happy to talk.

We've had tons of talk about the pricing changes and structure over the last year, so I won't rehash that hear.

As far as the Wordpress Toolkit concerns, there is an option to upgrade to a "Deluxe" version of the software through the interface, but other than that there's no selling happening through the page. I'm not sure what you mean by "management services" so you if you could provide me with some clarification on that I'd be happy to help.

It's easy to remove the software as well - just remove the RPM and it will be uninstalled and removed from both WHM and cPanel. The command to do this as of right now is:

rpm -e --nodeps wp-toolkit-cpanel

We definitely don't want resellers to feel left out of the mix, so let us know if you have any other concerns!

 

[jwogrady]

As far as the Wordpress Toolkit concerns, there is an option to upgrade to a "Deluxe" version of the software through the interface, but other than that there's no selling happening through the page.

Thanks for the response. Who is the customer paying for the Deluxe version? I understood it to mean cPanel is selling software/plugins on our servers to our customers. In this case, it is a tool to manage WordPress.

 

[cPRex]

Currently the Deluxe version isn't available to anyone, but if a user clicks that option at this time they'll get redirected to Coming Soon - WordPress Toolkit | cPanel

There is going to be an update at some point this month which will offer greater control over the links on the page. So, if you install Wordpress Toolkit on the machine, and access that area of the server from WHM, you can specify where that link will go. Partners will also be able to change this behavior in their Manage2 account to avoid having to update each server manually.

 

[mujeebahmedh]

how to get the Cpanel contact email address, to resolve the errors in webhosting

 

[cPRex]

@mujeebahmedh - details on how to create a support ticket can be found here: Create Support Ticket | cPanel & WHM Documentation