[this article was recently sent out to our web hosting clients. we are posting it here for reference purposes]

Since 2012, DoRoyal has been providing a high quality cPanel hosting experience. We're currently hosting thousands of websites using cPanel, which back then, was a fairly easy and straightforward thing to do. It involved us spinning up a server, buying a WHM/cPanel license, and boom. You got yourself a cPanel server (mostly) ready for public use! Of course, that's the over simplified version of it, but you get the idea.

Historically, the primary expense of your typical website hosting provider, was with the server hardware itself. Acquiring high end dedicated servers has never been inexpensive to do, but by doing so, the hosting provider would be able to put hundreds or even thousands of hosting accounts onto a single dedicated box. This, of course, saved a fair bit of money, and made management far easier, as you could theoretically operate your entire hosting infrastructure from a single dedicated machine.

Unfortunately, things within the hosting industry have changed over the last couple of years. While cPanel has always been the staple of the hosting industry, and is still the most widely used control panel around, there has been a massive push from various providers, both big and small, to move away from cPanel, in favour of DirectAdmin. There are a few primary reasons for this, including;

1. Pricing. Back when we started in 2012, the cost of cPanel was $35 per server. Today, in 2023, the cost of cPanel is infinite, with a starting price of $60 for 100 accounts. You must now buy additional accounts at an additional rate. Each account, if purchased from cPanel directly, costs $0.39, and must be bought in bulk. 100 accounts for $39. Meaning, if we as a web host have 1000 accounts, that would cost us $60 for the first 100, and $351 for the additional 900.
2. Price Increases. Despite the already high cost of acquiring a new cPanel license, they've been increasing their prices every couple of months. The most recent price increase was in December of 2022.
3. Trust. To be frank, many providers are losing trust in cPanel. When they were acquired by Oakley Capital back in 2018, the overall feel of cPanel and its development team changed.  Before, they were active on various web hosting communities, and talked to their customers in a down-to-Earth and very human way. Today, they're a lot more robotic, and tend to avoid direct questions.
4. Questionable Development. In addition to their lower quality support and interaction with the community, the development of cPanel has also begun to become a tad questionable, with them adding or changing various features or services that ultimately end up confusing both the hosting providers, as well as the end users. (removing Addon Domains being a primary example)

We build each of our servers with the goal of being able to reliably sustain 6000-12000 active accounts. If we were to push our server to its intended capacity of 9000 accounts, our control panel costs would be;

cPanel: $2760 / month
DirectAdmin: $30 / month

The above prices do not include additional licenses, or the cost of our dedicated servers. The above prices are strictly for the control panels. Nothing else.

cPanel to DirectAdmin

Considering the general lack of trust and sustainability regarding cPanel and its future, we have decided to switch our primary panel over to DirectAdmin. All current and future accounts will be moved over to one of our DirectAdmin servers, with the long-term goal to discontinue our cPanel hosting services entirely.

Some things to be aware of;

1. The DirectAdmin interface is different, but ultimately, the functionality is the same between cPanel and DirectAdmin.
2. There will be no differences between cPanel and DirectAdmin, as far as the core functionality of your website goes. WordPress will work just as well on DirectAdmin as it does on cPanel.
3. Your web hosting plan will continue to have all of the same features and functions, including our older grandfathered plans and packages.
4. While Starter Plan, Jester's Plan, and King's Plan, are not yet a part of our DirectAdmin offering, we fully intend to move those three packages over to DirectAdmin, and make them available for sale.
5. The cPanel server will still remain online and functional, at least for the foreseeable future.
6. You can opt to remain on our cPanel server, though we will require a valid reason or purpose. 

When is This Happening?

While we do not have a specific date in mind, we expect to migrate everything over to DirectAdmin around April of 2023. Some accounts may also be moved sooner.

Questions?

If you have any questions, feel free to open a support ticket. Also remember, you can opt out of this transfer. We know that some of our clients are legitimately taking advantage of cPanel's exclusive functions and features, so if you wish to opt out of being transferred over to DirectAdmin, please let us know, and we will keep your account on the current cPanel server.