Server Shopping

Page initially created: 2025-02-07.

I outlined my requirements and compiled my research on replacing my dedicated server in this file. On Feb. 6, I finally got around to sending out a passel of letters to a select few vendors. Rather than further clutter the research file with responses and further questions and research notes, I thought I should start again with a fresh file. There is, after all, much to sort through.

I started by crafting a standard RFP letter, which follows (unindented in case I want to copy and reuse it later) between horizontal bar markers. The actual letters/messages I sent (about half via email, half through HTML forms, the latter often plugged directly into the vendor's support ticket system) might also include a greeting, a "thanks for your time," and possibly a PS specific to the vendor (although I did fewer of those as the night wore on).

I've been building and managing websites since 2001, and for most of that time I've leased a fairly low-end dedicated server. I've had my current machine since 2018, but the vendor is no longer providing satisfactory support -- something they blame on cPanel hiking their licensing fees. While it's possible to get a less expensive VPS -- (and possibly better performing, although that's hard to estimate -- now, possibly with some alternative to cPanel, I've started to wonder whether my needs might be better served by some kind of Seller Rehosting setup.

My current needs are pretty modest: I'm hosting 10 websites, which take about 30GB disk storage, and have used no more than 300GB bandwidth in any month in the last year. The websites are a mix of WordPress and hand-coded PHP, with a bit of MySQL. I use the SSL certificate provided by cPanel. The only other feature I make much use of is Mailman for a few light-traffic email lists (one has 300 subscribers, the others are in the 10-20 range). Email is my biggest headache, as my IP address has been blacklisted by several major carriers, for reasons I can find no explanation for, nor get much help from. (At one point, cPanel took over support directly, but now they're also passing the buck.)

Of course, I would like a plan that doesn't just meet my minimal needs, but provides some head room and a growth path -- not that I expect I'm ever going to expand much beyond being a service I offer to friends and family, as well as supporting my own writing. Also, I want to avoid anything with future price hikes, or that penalizes me if I decide you're not providing the service I need. I've been on my current plan for six years, trying as it has been, so I'm not what you'd call a "flighty" customer. I'm also "retired" now, but I was a UNIX/Linux sysadmin and programmer from 1980-2010, so I have solid (though possibly dated) do-it-yourself skills, and promise not to bother your service people with frivolous questions, and to do what I can to keep everything running smoothly.)

After I decided I need to make a change, I've looked at about 70 possible vendors, and you're one of the few I've decided to approach. Rather than me trying to guess from your menu, please respond with any further questions you have, in order to give me a specific proposal, with possible options. Also, if you really think a VPS would be a better choice for me, I'd like to hear why. I hope to make a decision this week.

20i: Sent message in form. Got a quick reply:

If you're hosting 10 websites, I would say you'd likely do best on our lowest Reseller Hosting plan. [$19.95 after 1st month discount; only 30GB SSD.] Even if all of those websites are yours, Reseller itself doesn't necessarily mean you have to resell packages, of course!

For your WordPress websites, we do have WordPress packages that are purpose built for them, though our Linux packages do run them just as well. The WordPress specific packages have a few extra tools that integrate into the website, such as a way to make a change to the home and siteurl tables for the main domain of your website without requiring SSH to do so. However, they are restricted to have the main website and a staging site built from it - subdomains contained on the same package wouldn't be possible. Linux packages allow defined document roots for subdomains however, so that could suit your purposes better, depending on the website.

It does sound like you're confident with UNIX and Linux based systems, so you're likely familiar with SSH in that case - you may find it easiest to run all of your websites on simple Linux packages, then.

The only item of concern I would say may be the email lists - the 10-20 ones would be absolutely fine on our platform, but our mailing system isn't designed for full bulk mail sending. However, does Mailman operate similarly to something like Mailjet or Mailgun? [No.] Those bulk mail sender services may be best suited for the larger site - but the others shouldn't require any of those systems!

The last item I can say is that our prices do tend to be much more stable than cPanel based hosts. We've designed all of our systems from the ground-up to integrate with our platform, and we don't make use of cPanel, instead using our own StackCP system. That does mean we don't require pushing that fee onto our clients, since there is no fee for using our own platform, of course!

I would also argue our Resellers systems are likely best for your use-case - our VPS systems tend to be for more heavier users, and at the prices you'd be looking for multi-site hosting, Reseller does the same job without any worries of overheads, I'd say. Do let me know if there's anything you'd like clarifying!

ScalaHosting: Lots of questions added in PS. Sent email. Got reply:

It's great to hear that you have extensive experience, and we'd love to help you find the best hosting solution.

Lately, many users have been looking for alternatives to cPanel due to unreliable management and frequent price increases.

The SPanel is a super-optimized platform, covering all of the cPanel-like features while being extremely light on the server itself. It is entirely developed by our company, we improve it all the time as it is based largely on the client's feedback we received through the years - something we call Cloud Democracy Policy. That is why we use it on our own servers as well. And the SPanel is included in the Entry Cloud and VPS plans, which means that it doesn't increase your bill at any point in the future.

Based on your usage -- 10 light websites and 30GB of storage -- our Entry Cloud plan would be an ideal starting point. It's essentially a VPS plan with dedicated resources of 2CPU cores, 2GB RAM, and an upgradeable 50GB NVMe SSD.

It comes with a dedicated IP as well. You've mentioned that your IP got blacklisted, so this will make a massive difference in the email work and delivery for the future. Our spam protection and blacklist monitoring will apply as well, ensuring that everything from the hosting end is clear and available for a great email experience.

All our plans come with a 30-day money-back guarantee so you can test everything with zero risk.

To make this better, we have something you won't find elsewhere - an anytime money-back policy. That means that if you take a plan for any time you like, 12 or 36 months, and decide to cancel after 3-4 months, we will refund you the remaining period, no questions asked.

Our technical team will handle the migration from your current provider. You'll just need to provide access, and we'll take care of the rest.

The price for the Entry Cloud with the promo pricing:

• 1 year - $19.95/month - $239.40
• 3 years - $14.95/month - $538.20

The regular renewal price for 1 year after that is $29.95/month

Let me know if this sounds good or if you have any other questions. I'd be happy to assist you further!

InterServer: Questions: support, migration, cPanel, email. Sent email. Reply (Ticket QPX-288-75852):

It's advisable to choose our managed 'Slice 8' VPS for your needs. You can check the pricing and details below:

$24.00/mo
4 Cores
8GB Memory
120GB SSD Storage
8TB Transfer
https://www.interserver.net/vps/

As for cPanel, they do raise the license fee each year, so opting for the Directadmin control panel is a better choice. We can provide a free Directadmin license that supports 1 user and 10 domains.

Here is Directadmin pricing details, if you need to add more users and domains: https://www.interserver.net/controlpanels/directadmin.html

We offer 24/7 support through chat, tickets, or phone calls. For email services, we recommend installing our MailBaby service on the server. MailBaby acts as an email smart host that provides outbound filtering. Emails are sent to MailBaby systems for content analysis, and then routed based on their content and score, or marked as spam if necessary. MailBaby also manages IP reputation. You can find more details here.

At the moment, we don't provide migration support for the VPS, but Directadmin includes a tool called cPanel import, which can assist with migrating from a cPanel-based server (root access to that server is required).

By default, SMTP ports are disabled on the VPS. We can enable them as long as they are not used for spamming purposes.

Of course, Let's Encrypt SSL and MySQL are supported in Direct Admin.

IonBlade: Email sent. Support ticket opened. Replied with link to support ticket:

Thank you for reaching out and providing such detailed information about your current hosting setup and requirements. Based on the needs you've outlined, I recommend starting with our Reseller Silver Plan. This plan provides 50GB of disk space, which not only covers your current usage (30GB) but also gives you additional headroom for growth.

Here's what our Reseller Silver Plan offers:

• Ample Resources: 50GB disk space and sufficient bandwidth to support your current and projected usage.
• Scalability: As your needs grow, you can easily upgrade to a higher-tier reseller hosting plan or transition to VPS/Cloud hosting.
• Dedicated IP Address: We can include a dedicated IP to help mitigate email blacklisting issues.
• Control Panel Options: While cPanel is included by default due to its robustness and security, we also offer alternatives like DirectAdmin or Plesk if you're looking for a more cost-effective solution.
• Discount: We're offering 50% off your first year of hosting to make the transition smoother.

We strive to keep our pricing competitive and avoid unnecessary price increases, though our prices are partly influenced by factors like cPanel licensing.

To provide a more tailored recommendation, I have a few additional questions:

1. RAM Requirements: At peak usage, do you know the approximate RAM your websites require? This will help us evaluate whether a VPS might better suit your needs.
2. Type of Websites: Are the sites primarily small static websites, blogs, or eCommerce platforms that might have higher resource demands?
3. Email Sending Volume: Approximately how many emails are sent daily? Do you follow email best practices (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) to improve deliverability?
4. Mailman Usage: For your Mailman lists, do you require any specific configurations or customizations to ensure smooth operation?

Based on your responses, I can confirm whether the Reseller Silver Plan is the best fit or if a VPS solution might offer better performance and flexibility.

Let me know if you have any additional questions or concerns. I look forward to helping you make the best choice for your hosting needs.

I answered:

I'll try to answer your questions.

RAM: My current dedicated server has 32GB RAM. That seems to be adequate, but RAM is cheap enough (when I buy it; leasing seems to be another world) that my home machines have at least 64GB RAM. When I last checked, it looked like my server was using 23GB RAM (so wasn't even swapping). That's the whole machine, whereas what you're quoting may be something else completely.

I'm often surprised by some of the small limits placed on RAM, SSD, etc., as in my world those are cheap resources. I'm inclined to want extra disk for things like temporary backups, which have no impact on website size or traffic.

Most of my sites are hand-coded PHP, with no JavaScript and nothing special beyond that on the server side. I need SSL because browsers expect it. I also need MySQL, at present primarily for WordPress, which I have several websites running. I'm not running spyware for Google or anything like that. I may want to do more server-side stuff in the future, but right now my sites are pretty lightweight.

I'm doing all the right things with email. Only one Mailman list has 200+ addresses, which I use seasonally, and no more than 3-5 times in a peak month. Beyond that, I'm doing very little email (although I'd like to do more if it worked). WHM was generating a lot of mail, but I directed that to a local account, which I can POP, so that doesn't really count.

If your prices quoted are right, I'd probably go for Gold over Silver, but if cPanel, etc., are extra, I'd have to think harder. When I click on "Get Started," it doesn't tell me anything useful. I'll be reusing my current domain names. My accounts use ns[12].hullworks.net for nameserver, so if you migrated that, their definitions shouldn't have to change (although if you have a better idea, let me know).

Asura: Submitted sales ticket. Reply:

I would recommend a Reseller plan for you're sort of setup, we do have dedicated plans for cPanel directly: https://www.asurahosting.com/cpanel-reseller-hosting. The plans do come with a different set of resources as well:

These are the resources that can be assigned per sub-account that you create under the reseller account:

Reseller 1 (Per account):

RAM: 1-2GB
I/O: 2MB/s
Entry Processes: 20
CPU: 2 Cores
Inodes: Unlimited
IOPS: 1024
Processes: 100

Reseller 2 (Per account)

RAM: 2-3GB
I/O: 5MB/s
Entry Processes: 25
CPU: 2-3 Cores
Inodes: Unlimited
IOPS: 1024
Processes: 100

Reseller 3 (Per account):
RAM: 2-4GB
I/O: 8MB/s
Entry Processes: 30
CPU: 3-5 Cores
Inodes: Unlimited
IOPS: 1024
Processes: 100

Reseller 4 (Per account):
RAM: 3-5GB
I/O: 10MB/s
Entry Processes: 30
CPU: 7 Cores
Inodes: Unlimited
IOPS: 1024
Processes: 100

Do keep in mind that you have to request it from us, as we assign the resources to each of your hosting plans that you create under your reseller account so it'll automatically be assigned to your hosting accounts.

Considering your bandwidth, I would recommend probably Reseller 2 / Reseller 3.

But they do support all the requirements you laid out, MySQL/MariaDB, PHP, Litespeed, etc.

Do let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

No Frills: Mail sent. Support ticket

Sounds like our cPanel reseller hosting plans would be a great fit. The CH-2 plan has 40GB of storage space with Unmetered bandwidth for $19.99 per month (plus any applicable sales taxes).

Regarding price hikes, they are likely to be a fact of life. We've faced increases in staffing costs, electricity costs and software licenses (including cPanel who increase prices each year), so anyone who tells you there will not be any future price hikes is likely lying to you. We don't do the "discounted first term" catch that some other providers do, with the exception of 90% off your first month with the coupon code "TRIAL" during checkout.

If you have root access to your current cPanel Dedicated Server, we can migrate your sites across quickly and easily to our server.

The only thing I will note of your setup is that we generally recommend that mailing lists are sent via third-party SMTP services, eg Amazon SES, which is supported by Mailman. That way, those emails are sent via Amazon's infrastructure. You'd setup your own Amazon account, and they charge you 10c per 1000 emails sent.

Just to add, our Technical Support is 24x7 on ticket/email and live chat.

Our Sales & Billing team operates during daytime hours in Australia/Singapore time zones, which is why it took so long to get back to you.

GlowHost: Email available, but instead submitted support ticket, as they promised both tech and sales review. Replied using ticket system:

We will be happy to provide a web hosting service for your project.

Regarding a Reseller Hosting Plan. You can check our plans on this page:

You can start with the Level I plan ($24.95 per month), which will cover your current needs of the number of cPanel accounts, disk space, and bandwidth.

We will be happy to help with the migration of your main account, including other cPanel accounts. Our technicians will do their best to make this process as seamless as possible.

Regarding room for growth. There is always room to upgrade your account with GlowHost. You will be able to upgrade your Reseller Plan to a higher level Reseller Plan, VDS, or Dedicated Server when the time comes. Our team will be happy to be of assistance with an upgrade.

Regarding Mailman support. I have had a consultation with our technicians and they informed that there won't be any issues with this. This is supported on our Reseller Hosting Plans.

Regarding the blacklisted IP address issue. We recommend using the SpamExperts addon for your outgoing emails in order to prevent them from being blacklisted. You can check more information regarding this here: SpamExperts is available from GlowHost at the cost of $3.00 per domain per month.

Please let us know if you have any questions, and we'll be happy to assist! We are here 24/7/365.

Also a follow up:

I'm following up here to add to my colleague's previous message.

I understand that there is a concern with price hikes. I'd like to assure you, in our almost 25 years of business, we've always offered stable pricing for our clients. Seeing is believing of course, so I'd like to invite you to have a look on The Internet Archive and draw your own conclusions.

That being said, even though we've historically offered very stable pricing for almost 25 years, we cannot rule out price increases entirely for some services, because vendors like cPanel are aggressively increasing their prices as of lately. However, I can say that despite the annual price increases over the last several years, we've not increased our prices for most of our services, and when we did increase our prices, we always try our best to grandfather our existing clients into the old pricing (which is the most common scenario).

Please let us know if you have any other questions, and our team will always be standing by to help.

Green Geeks: Mail sent. Opened support ticket (JDQ-613-13233). Reply:

Thank you for reaching out to GreenGeeks and for considering us as your new hosting provider. We appreciate the detailed overview of your hosting requirements, and based on your needs, we believe our Reseller 25 plan would be a great fit for you. This plan offers:

• 60 GB SSD Disk Space -- Ensuring fast and reliable storage.
• 600 GB Transfer -- More than enough for your current usage with room to grow.
• 25 cPanel Accounts -- Allowing you to manage your sites efficiently and scale as needed.

The onboarding price for this plan is $19.95/month, with a standard renewal rate of $34.95/month. Unlike other providers, we prioritize transparency, meaning no hidden fees or unexpected charges -- what you see is what you get.

Addressing Your Specific Concerns:

• Email Deliverability Issues -- To help mitigate blacklisting concerns, we can offer you a dedicated IP for $48 per year, which can greatly improve email reputation and deliverability.
• SSL Certificates -- We provide free Let's Encrypt SSL certificates, ensuring all your sites are secure without additional costs.
• cPanel Expertise & Support -- While you have extensive technical experience, even though we understand that you have a do-it-yourself skills but there may still be moments where you need assistance. Our entire support team is cPanel-certified, meaning you'll receive knowledgeable, high-quality support whenever required.
• Bulk Email Sending -- We do offer bulk email functionality within cPanel; however, there is a sending limit of 100 emails per hour. If Mailman is critical to your operations, we recommend reviewing whether this limit aligns with your needs, if yes then you can check our VPS plan as we have no limit on email sending.

Why GreenGeeks?

We're not just another hosting provider -- we pride ourselves on delivering reliable, eco-friendly hosting with exceptional support. With us, you won't have to worry about price hikes or unnecessary upsells. Our goal is to provide a long-term, stable, and scalable hosting solution that grows with you.

Let us know if you'd like to proceed with this plan or if you have any further questions. We'd be happy to assist you in making the best choice for your hosting needs.

Namecheap: Mail sent. Reply:

Thank you for reaching out and providing such detailed insights into your hosting requirements.

Given your usage, technical background, and preference for long-term stability, we believe our VPS Pulsar package would be an excellent starting point. This plan offers a balance of performance, control, and affordability while allowing you to scale if needed. You are welcome to check the details about this package here.

You can continue using cPanel, though its licensing fees are subject to change as determined by cPanel itself. The changes have a direct impact on all hosting providers, including Namecheap.

Alternatively, we support another control panel like Webuzo if you're open to switching.

Given your email concerns, a VPS provides a dedicated IP address, reducing the chances of blacklisting. Please note that IP reputation is the sole responsibility of the user. Once a dedicated IP address or VPS/Dedicated server with the User-Responsible management type is purchased, the IP holder (user) is to maintain its reputation.

Regarding SSL. Free SSL certificates are available, just like your current setup with the cPanel. Once you enable AutoSSL, your websites are automatically secured with a free, Domain Validated SSL certificate. Besides, at expiration time, a new, free SSL is requested and automatically installed. You are welcome to read more about this feature here.

If your resource demands increase, you can seamlessly upgrade to VPS Quasar, which offers more CPU, RAM, and storage. This ensures your websites continue running optimally without migrating to a different provider.

Feel free to reach out in case of any questions or concerns. We'd be happy to assist you at any time.

I wrote back:

Thanks for your reply. Looking at your monthly pricing, the difference between Quasar ($15.88/mo) and Pulsar ($9.88/mo) in itself doesn't seem like much of a stretch, but there seem to be some extra-cost items further down. I don't know how to gauge my needs for "CPU cores" and RAM, but the extra SSD and bandwidth moves from meeting my current needs to providing some manner of comfort.

I take it the panel software is all extra, so I'm looking at $11.88/mo for Webuzo (15 accounts) or $19.88/mo for cPanel (also 15 accounts), as I think the solo licenses would be too restricting for me. While I'm generally satisfied with cPanel, I'm not wed to it. The only thing I use there that I'm not seeing under Webuzo is GNU Mailman. Its present value to me is pretty limited, as much of what I've been sending out has been blocked or spam-trapped by major email providers (Gmail, MSN, etc.). This shouldn't be a problem, but convincing mega-corps not to screw you over is a lot of work -- and something my previous vendor has been no help with. (I'm hoping to get some support people who will at least try to answer some questions on this.)It's also been suggested to me that I should send email through a third-party service, so I will look into that. Webuzo's "features list" has MailChannels and JetBackup as "coming soon." Probably more extra-cost services, but the former is one of the mail services I've run across.

The other possible extra-cost item I see is "VPS Server Management," which could be another $25/mo, but from your file looks more like a crap shoot: the flat rates seem like rare events, but not something one feels like dickering over when they're actually needed. I ordered some extra level of backups and management with my old dedicated server, and never got a dime's worth of value out of them. I want to make sure I get better service this time -- especially to answer questions (like I currently get tons of WHM notifications, so I might wonder which ones to take seriously, and what to do about them, or I might ask where the email deliverability logs are; I'm pretty hands-on, but I don't have infinite time to research things), which is what you seem to be offering under your "24/7 Service" heading.Am I missing anything here?

Oh, I see you have a separate add-on price for Softaculous, but Webuzo implies they include it. Do they? I'm also wondering whether Webuzo has something equivalent to the WP Toolkit that comes with cPanel (or at least did with 110)?

Entirely Digital/OLM: No email address available. I used their ticket system to contact their sales department (ticket #43495836). Got reply:

For only 10 cpanel sites, you can use Starter Reseller:

80G storage and 20 cpanel accounts at $27/month

You can upgrade that any time and if you feel a VPS is best down the road, cpanel accounts are easy to migrated.

Base VPS is $60/month + cpanel license which will be close to $90/month.

Let us know if you wish to proceed - if your source server is cpanel we can do a WHM > WHM transfer via SSH/Transfer tool for you.

Fast Comet: Sent email, but I have doubts, especially about pricing. Got reply:

Thank you for reaching out and considering FastComet as your potential hosting provider.

We appreciate the detailed overview of your hosting needs and technical background, and we're confident that we can offer a solution that aligns with your goals while ensuring long-term reliability and flexibility.

Based on your requirements, we would recommend considering our managed VPS plans, and more specifically Cloud VPS 2.

This plan offers the performance and control you need, with additional headroom for growth. With this plan, you get 1 dedicated IP address, and we also provide 5 free website transfers. Our VPS plans are fully managed and come with WHM including one cPanel. In case you want to separate each website you can do that by adding more cPanel accounts, which provide individual access to each of your users. We offer a cPanel Pro Licence with 30 cPanels for $27.93/month.

As for your email deliverability challenges, we understand how important this is for your business. That's why we offer SpamExperts extra as an Add-on service, which is a powerful tool designed to safeguard your email systems.

SpamExperts offers: Spam Filtering: Advanced algorithms that help prevent unwanted emails, ensuring that only legitimate messages reach your inbox.

Email Reputation Management: Prevents your IP address from being blacklisted, as SpamExperts proactively filters outgoing emails and ensures compliance with email best practices.

SpamExperts Outband Filter Add-on is $19.95 per month.

We believe that our managed VPS plans, combined with the email protection tools provided by SpamExperts Outband Filter, will give you a solution that suits your current needs while also giving you space for future growth.

We are currently running a Winter Sale with 30% off and to take the most advantage of it you can start with a 3-month plan:

Please, let us know if you would like to get further details or have questions. We are happy to work with you to find a solution that best fits your needs, and we look forward to being a long-term partner in your web hosting journey.

JoneSolutions: Reseller Hosting: Offers DirectAdmin. Sent email (2/10).

SetraHost: DirectAdmin Reseller Hosting: Sent email (extra PS).

Shock Hosting: Reseller Hosting: cPanel plans seem reasonable. Opened sales ticket. Reply:

Thanks for reaching out and considering us as your hosting provider!

Based on what you are describing, it definitely sounds like you don't need your own server and Reseller Hosting would be a perfect fit for your requirements. The overall cost is much lower compared to your own server and we take care of the server management so you don't need to worry about the technical side.

When it comes to email deliverability, we route all outbound emails through MailChannels which is an email filtering service that uses a high reputation IP address pool to help ensure that emails land in the inbox and not spam folder. Mailman with 300 subscribers is also not an issue.

One thing that sets us apart from other hosting providers is that we include a dedicated IP address for free with all plans for extra reliability. Other providers put you on a shared IP with hundreds of other clients which can be problematic. We also have multiple datacenter locations around the world so that you can choose the closest location to you.

Our Low Shock Reseller plan allows you to have 10 cPanel accounts (plus a main cPanel account - 11 in total) for $19.99/month. If you pre-pay you would be eligible for a discount of up to 25% offer but you are more than welcome to start with a monthly plan and then switch to a longer billing cycle in the future to receive the pre-pay discount.

Also I just wanted to mention that we offer free migrations so we will handle the migration from your current server.

Thank you again for considering us as your hosting provider. There are lots of providers out there so we really appreciate every client that trusts us with hosting their websites!

I thought about this overnight, and decided that this is the most promising choice so far. I responded thus (via ticket):

This sounds, if anything, too good to be true. You're basically offering the whole package, with no obvious gotchas, for about what most vendors are tacking on as a surcharge for cPanel alone. I had pretty much reconciled myself to switching to another panel, but it should be easier to make the move to another cPanel system, so that's a plus. But you seem to be a legit company, and I can imagine this working out, perhaps perfectly.

I'm pretty solid on technical matters, but you are right that there is a lot of headache to running a dedicated server that your setup will save me. You also appear to have thought the email delivery problem through. I hope that anything that MailChannels flags as outgoing spam will be properly explained. I hate spam as much as anyone, but I should be able to send email to lists of people who asked to receive them.

I'm not seeing a lot of gory details about limited CPU slices/cores, RAM, SSD, or even bandwidth for your various plans, which suggests to me that you're technically confident that your system provides adequate performance under all reasonable loads, and that your marketing people haven't been allowed to turn them into obstacles for tier-building. I'm all too aware of cPanel's own tier marketing schemes, but it looks like you have even that under control (at least for now).

I'd like to start with your mid-level ($24.95/month) plan, billed monthly for now. I'd like to have the room for adding a few extra accounts, and it's well within my budget. I gather that I can set up multiple domain names under a single cPanel account, but thus far I've always set up separate user accounts for each domain.

Let me know what I need to do to arrange payment, and whatever you need to migrate the websites. I want to go through my current server, make backups, and take notes on configuration, but you don't need for me to complete before you start. I've been using hullworks.net as my flagship domain (so the server is server.hullworks.net). My nameservers are ns[12].hullworks.net; my clients manage their own domain names, so they are already pointing to my nameservers, but feel free to recommend whatever arrangement you think best.

One motivation for moving fast on this is that the bill for next month's dedicated server arrives on Thursday, Feb. 13, so it would be especially nice to shut them off today or tomorrow.

My phone number is 316-509-6067 (cell) or 316-263-7414 (home). My address is 747 N. Faulkner St., Wichita, KS 67203. My visitors are everywhere (one of my clients is in New Zealand), but probably best to use one of your mid-US data centers, as the only one likely to notice any performance issues is me.

I'll get to work now. Please let me know whatever you need from me, and however I can help move this process along. Thanks very much.

I wrote the following to sales@cpanel.net:

I am leasing a fairly low-end dedicated server through Hosting & Designs. My current server was configured in 2018, with cPanel/WHM included. They subsequently bumped my monthly price up, supposedly to cover one of your price increases. I gather there have been more, but since this initial inflation, my vendor (and quite possibly you) have responded with ever-diminishing levels of support. A few years back, my vendor informed me that I would have to go to you for support. I filed one ticket with you, and got a satisfactory resolution, but I've tended to let things slide, even when I started getting mail messages that I was running software past its EOL. When I finally did try to follow up on this, I found that my vendor had shut down its support ticket system. When I filed a ticket with you, I was told I would have to contact some third party I've never heard of. I eventually figured out (on my own) that the obsolete software is CentOS 7.9, and that your software is still supported (although at 110 it's far from your latest & greatest, so it's unclear how much longer until it breaks). When I finally did get hold of my vendor, they suggested I license cPanel straight from you, which would increase my monthly bill from $115 to $180 -- and wouldn't solve the problem, since they're responsible for upgrading CentOS.

The upshot of this is that I need to find a new webhosting vendor. Given tech and pricing trends, and my own modest requirements (10-20 low-volume websites), I scaled back what I was shopping for from dedicated servers to VPS and finally to "reseller hosting" plans. Most of what I'm seeing still come with some kind of bundled cPanel/WHM. (I'm unclear how much of the WHM I'm used to actually functions in a shared hosting environment. I'd guess that on a full VPS system it would appear to be the same, but on a shared host it would need to function with something less than full root powers.) Others charge extra, and some offer alternatives like DirectAdmin or their own panels (like SPanel). In all cases, I am led to worry that you'll keep raising prices (and possibly cutting and/or complicating support) in ways that would eventually make me regret going with another cPanel/WHM system.

Before I make a decision, I thought I should at least get in touch with you, and see what your version of this story is. I can imagine scenarios where your pricing might be quite reasonable, especially if your service is reliably as competent as it seemed to be in my one chance encounter. It's possible, for instance, that your terms for the reseller resellers are less onerous than they are for end users. However, I'm just a retired programmer and writer helping his friends out with their website needs, and this was already a money-losing venture before you started tightening the screws. I'm never going to make the kind of money you seem to be angling for. So I'm just hoping to get a clearer idea of where you're going, and what I should be doing.

Sorry if I seem irate, but I've been increasingly frustrated by my vendor for a long time now, and the search for an alternative is turning out to be extremely complicated, especially given the large number of companies I've never heard of offering plans I don't especially trust for one reason or another (and there are literally dozens of them). I appreciate your understanding, and (hopefully) considerate response. Also, if you have any particular hosting vendors you think are especially trustworthy, I'd appreciate the advice.

I received this in response:

To answer your concerns, I can confirm that as of December 16, 2023, we have stopped providing complementary technical support for any individual who has their cPanel license issued through their web hosting provider. This decision was made as it is a violation of our licensing agreement that we have with the cPanel Partner.

As for using our software on a VPS, I can verify that many of our customers are using a VPS, and have had great success. Since a VPS is essentially a shared/cloud hosting plan, it is provisioned to function as a dedicated server with "root" privileges, but with the resources being shared amongst other uses on that dedicated server.

Unfortunately, it would not be proper for us to recommend one hosting provider over another, but you are welcome to check our Partner Directory for a list of cPanel Partners that provide cPanel at link.

To find some recommendations for hosting providers, I would suggest a website called Web Hosting Talk.

This is an Internet forum where people can discuss topics related to web hosting, especially discussing web hosting companies and their personal experiences with the companies.

If there is anything else you feel I can be of assistance with, please do not hesitate to reply to this message.