cPanel, Plesk and WHMCS Price Increases, and the Hosts That Avoid Them

The 2027 prices at a glance

Every main licence, this year against next. The changes are 8 to 20 percent, and the biggest ones land on hosting businesses: Plesk Web Host on a VPS, cPanel's charge per extra account, and WHMCS's largest tiers.

cPanel: new prices from 16 December 2026

cPanel warned its partners on 1 October that prices would change again, and sent the figures to customers on 8 October. The new list applies to existing and new licences from 16 December 2026, two weeks before Plesk and WHMCS. That timing is not new: the 2023 list also started on 16 December of the year before.

The headline tiers rise 8 to 10 percent. The number that matters most to a shared host is the charge for each account above 100 on a Premier licence, which goes from $0.49 to $0.55, up 12.2 percent. According to the same report, cPanel's resold add-ons go up about 6 percent too: Imunify360 from $45 to $47.70 and KernelCare from $3 to $3.18.

The longer story starts in mid-2019. Until then cPanel sold a VPS licence for $20 a month and a dedicated-server licence for $45, each for any number of accounts. In mid-2019 it switched to tiers counted by the account: Solo for one account at $15, Admin for five at $20, Pro for 30 at $30, and Premier for 100 at $45 plus $0.20 for every account beyond that. A server with 300 accounts went from $45 to $85 a month, and the price has risen almost every January since.

Solo is the one that stands out. It barely moved for five years and then jumped from $17.49 to $26.99 in January 2025, a 54 percent rise in one step. If you run a single site on a VPS with cPanel, your licence alone now costs more than many complete hosting plans.

Plesk: one price for VPS and dedicated

Plesk's 2027 customer licensing guide is valid from 1 January 2027. Web Admin goes to $18.99 a month, Web Pro to $33.99 and Web Host to $73.99. The bigger change is structural: in 2026 a Web Host licence cost $62.99 on a VPS and $69.99 on a dedicated server, and from 2027 both pay $73.99. So the same list is a 5.7 percent rise on a dedicated server and a 17.5 percent rise on a VPS.

Yearly billing doesn't change the picture much. A yearly licence costs eleven times the monthly price, one month free, so a year of Web Host is $813.89.

The line to watch is Web Host on a VPS, the edition a small host or agency uses to sell accounts from one server. It was $25 a month in 2019, $40 in 2024, $49.99 in 2025, $62.99 in 2026 and will be $73.99 in 2027. That is 196 percent in eight years, and 85 percent in the last three alone.

WHMCS: every tier, old and new

WHMCS is the billing system most small hosts and resellers use. Its 2027 licensing guide applies from 1 January 2027, and every self-hosted tier goes up. WHMCS prices by active clients, and the largest tiers rise the most.

For five years WHMCS barely moved: Plus stayed at $18.95 from 2019 to the end of 2023, and Professional and Business went up once, in spring 2021. Then came four January increases in a row. Plus is now 111 percent above its 2023 price, and a year of it goes from $227.40 in 2023 to $479.88 in 2027.

What you pay depends on how WHMCS counts. An active client is anyone with at least one product, service, addon or domain in Active or Suspended status, whether or not they pay you. Suspended accounts you never terminate, one-off jobs left Active, and customers who only buy a domain all count in full. The tiers are cliffs: client number 1,001 moves you from $99.99 to $199.99, and the licence upgrades itself unless you have opted out in the members area.

What the same server costs now

Percentages hide how much the bill has changed, so here is the licence for four ordinary setups, early 2019 against 2027. These are list prices for the licence alone, before the server, backups or support.

• One site on a VPS: cPanel Solo, $15 a month in 2019, $32.99 from December. Up 120 percent.
• An agency VPS with 30 client sites: in early 2019 a cPanel VPS licence covered any number of accounts for $20. The same server now needs Pro at $58.99. Up 195 percent.
• A shared-hosting server with 300 accounts: a dedicated licence was $45 flat. In 2027 it is Premier at $76.99 plus 200 extra accounts at $0.55, so $186.99 a month. Up 316 percent.
• A small hosting business on Plesk: Web Host on a VPS, $25 then and $73.99 now. Up 196 percent.

Add billing software and the yearly increase stacks. A reseller running cPanel Premier with WHMCS Plus pays $104.94 a month today and $116.98 from January, 11.5 percent more. The same business on Plesk Web Host for a VPS with WHMCS Plus goes from $97.94 to $113.98, 16.4 percent more, all in the same quarter.

Why the increases keep coming

Three things explain the pattern. First, all three products belong to WebPros: a host that leaves cPanel for Plesk, and bills with WHMCS either way, still pays the same company. Second, cPanel has priced by the account since 2019, so a host's bill grows with every customer it signs, on top of each list increase. Third, the increases now arrive on a calendar. Each autumn brings an announcement, and each December or January the new list applies to existing licences too.

Control panel licences are one of several costs pushing hosting renewals up. The others, from private-equity ownership to datacenter power prices, are in why hosting renewal prices keep rising. If you want the panels themselves compared feature by feature, see cPanel vs Plesk vs DirectAdmin vs SPanel, which also explains what each cPanel tier covers.

Will your hosting bill go up?

It depends on what sits between you and the licence.

If you are on shared hosting with cPanel, your host pays per account. At list price, a 300-account server pays about $0.62 a month per account for cPanel alone in 2027. Big hosts pay partner rates that are lower and not public, but those move in the same direction every year. You will not see a "cPanel" line on your invoice. It shows up in the renewal price, which is why your second year so often costs far more than your first (the renewal pricing guide has the numbers by host).

If you run a VPS with cPanel or Plesk, the licence is either a line on your invoice or folded into a "managed" price. Check which tier you are on: a server with six sites on Admin has to move to Pro, and that step alone is $20 a month in 2027.

If you resell hosting or bill clients through WHMCS, you pay both increases directly. Before January, count your active clients against the next WHMCS cliff (250, 500, 1,000) and clear out suspended accounts nobody pays for. That is often worth more than the whole increase.

How to avoid it: hosts with their own control panel

A host that built its own control panel pays developers to maintain it. It doesn't pay WebPros a monthly fee for every account, and nobody else decides in October what its panel will cost in January. That is the one structural way out of these increases, and it is why several hosts I recommend run their own panel.

The chart above is the whole argument. In 2019 a cPanel Solo licence cost $15 and a Cloudways server cost $10. By 2027 the licence on its own costs $32.99, while the Cloudways server, with its panel and management included, costs $11.00/mo.

Cloudways: its own panel, the same price every month

Cloudways runs its own platform panel on top of DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, AWS and Google Cloud servers. There is no cPanel and no Plesk underneath, so no licence fee per site: you pay for the server, and adding another WordPress site to it adds no licence charge. Billing is monthly, and the list price is the same in month one and month 36. The entry server on DigitalOcean is $11.00/mo, and its pricing page has moved once since 2019, from $10 to $11 in 2023.

It fits agencies and freelancers who now pay for a cPanel VPS, and anyone who wants a fixed monthly bill. I cover setup, speed and the real cost in the Cloudways review.

See Cloudways' plans

ScalaHosting: SPanel instead of a cPanel licence

ScalaHosting built SPanel as a cPanel replacement, and it comes free on its cloud VPS plans. It looks and works much like cPanel (email, DNS, files, one-click WordPress), so moving from a cPanel server is not a big change. Entry Cloud starts at $24.95/mo on a 36-month term and renews at $39.95/mo, with the server, SPanel and management included. For comparison, a cPanel Admin licence for five accounts costs $38.99 a month from December, on its own, before any server.

It fits small businesses and resellers who want a cPanel-style panel on their own VPS without the licence. More in the ScalaHosting review.

See ScalaHosting's cloud VPS

Hostinger: hPanel and the lowest entry price

Hostinger runs its own hPanel instead of cPanel, so it pays no per-account panel licence on its shared plans. Premium starts at $2.99/mo on a 48-month term. One thing to know: it renews at $10.99/mo. An own panel removes the licence cost, not the gap between a first term and a renewal, so the long term is where Hostinger is good value.

It fits a first site or a small blog on a budget. Details in the Hostinger review.

See Hostinger's plans

Other well-known hosts with their own panel include SiteGround (Site Tools) and Kinsta (MyKinsta). Whichever you pick, read the renewal price, not just the first-term price. For hosts ranked by how steady their prices stay, see the best hosting for long-term price stability.

What to do before the new prices start

1. Check your tier against your real account count. cPanel tiers stop at 1, 5, 30 and 100 accounts, WHMCS at 250, 500 and 1,000 clients. A few stale accounts can push you over a step.
2. Pay yearly where it helps. A yearly Plesk licence costs eleven months. If your host sells the licence, ask whether renewing early keeps today's price.
3. Price the move before the renewal, not after. If most of your sites are WordPress, a host with its own panel will usually cost less than a VPS plus a cPanel licence, and the gap grows every year.
4. On shared hosting, compare renewal prices. The licence never shows on your invoice, but the renewal does. Use the hosting cost calculator for the three-year total.

Frequently asked questions

When do the new cPanel prices start?

On 16 December 2026, for existing and new licences, according to cPanel's email to customers of 8 October 2026. Solo goes to $32.99 a month, Admin to $38.99, Pro to $58.99 and Premier to $76.99 for 100 accounts, plus $0.55 for each account above 100.

How much will Plesk cost in 2027?

From 1 January 2027, Plesk's own licensing guide lists Web Admin at $18.99 a month, Web Pro at $33.99 and Web Host at $73.99. The same price now applies on a VPS and on a dedicated server. A yearly licence costs eleven months, so a year of Web Host is $813.89.

How much will WHMCS cost in 2027?

From 1 January 2027, WHMCS Plus (up to 250 active clients) costs $39.99 a month, Professional (500) $62.99 and Business for 1,000 clients $99.99. Every self-hosted tier goes up by 11 to 20 percent, and the three largest Business tiers by 20 percent.

Is Plesk cheaper than cPanel in 2027?

For a hosting server with many accounts, usually yes. Plesk Web Host is $73.99 a month for unlimited domains, while cPanel Premier is $76.99 for 100 accounts plus $0.55 for each extra one, so a 300-account cPanel server costs $186.99. For one site, cPanel Solo at $32.99 is more than Plesk Web Admin at $18.99, which allows 10 domains.

Why do cPanel, Plesk and WHMCS all go up at the same time?

All three belong to the same company, WebPros, and since 2024 each has raised its list prices every year, announced in the autumn and applied from mid-December (cPanel) or 1 January (Plesk and WHMCS). cPanel has also priced by the account since 2019, so a host's bill grows with every customer it adds.

Which hosts do not use cPanel?

Hosts that built their own control panel: Cloudways (its own platform panel), ScalaHosting (SPanel), Hostinger (hPanel), SiteGround (Site Tools) and Kinsta (MyKinsta), among others. They pay their own developers instead of a per-account licence fee, so a cPanel or Plesk price list does not reach their customers' invoices.

Can I keep using cPanel and avoid the increase?

Not at list price. You can soften it: stay on the smallest tier that fits your account count, remove accounts nobody pays for, buy through a host or partner that bundles the licence, or move sites that do not need cPanel to a host with its own panel.