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WebPros/cPanel start directly competing with their customers/license holders
This looks to be sending out to everyone.
Whats your take? About to see a lot more inhouse panels? Very much a shit move.
Dear WebPros Partner,
You are receiving this message as a contractual notification under your existing partnership with WebPros.
We are pleased to inform you that WebPros Cloud and its portfolio of cloud-delivered services are now available to WebPros partners, providing new opportunities to expand your services, accelerate growth, and deliver modern solutions without the complexity of managing underlying infrastructure.
WebPros Cloud is a fully managed, partner-first ecosystem designed to help you launch and scale services under your own brand, backed by global infrastructure, automated operations, and the trusted WebPros brand.
Available WebPros Cloud Products
Through WebPros Cloud, partners can access and offer a growing portfolio of solutions, including (subject to technical availability):
Managed Cloud for WordPress, fully managed, high-performance WordPress hosting
WebPros Nova, AI-powered website and application building solution
WHMCS Cloud, full power of WHMCS, infrastructure-free SaaS experience
Business Email, a professional email platform designed for reliability and recurring revenue
Premium Shared Hosting, built for performance and reliability
Additional WebPros Cloud services as they become available
These solutions are designed to help partners diversify offerings, create new revenue streams, and bring cloud services to market faster
Francisco
Comments
Sounds like it's just them pushing their own products for people to resell, like how they do In WHMCS? Guessing it'll be pretty expensive after markups from the third parties that offer it. I would expect this anyway. WebPros will find new ways to bring in revenue, they know how it's going in the future.
I think @Francisco is referring to these:
If you're running a shared hosting company, your control panel maker is now competing with you by trying to offer the same service to your customers.
Stealing their own customers' customers is downright horrible.
Yeah I got the jist of it. It’s unfortunate but honestly not surprising to me.
A lot of hosting companies have a control panel they license to others to use like Hostinger's Hpanel. There's even hosting companies producing open source panels, like ISPConfig. Sometimes a control panel becomes a host too, like Cyberpanel did.
So, it's not really a groundbreaking thing.
One might think it's a good development for cpanel/plesk users, because now webpros will get real world experience to help guide development of their platform, giving better updates for those panel users.
I imagine their offering will be subpar quality and subpar support - no real competition for any hosts other than the other soulless corps like GoDaddy, newfold digital, etc... Plus, it's unclear if they mean to sell directly to end-user customers, or focus entirely on the white labeled reseller, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did both, it makes sense from a business perspective.
I just read the cPanel license agreement.
If you're a hosting provider who licensed cPanel, you've explicitly given cPanel the right to contact all of your customers in the event cPanel cancels your license or if your license expires.
"cPanel shall also have the right (but not the obligation) to notify any Third Party Users or an End User that cPanel will or has terminated, suspended or disabled their use of the Software due to the termination or expiration of this Agreement or a breach of this Agreement. In the event that cPanel notifies Third Party Users or an End User pursuant to the preceding sentence, cPanel reserves the right to offer products and services, including, without limitation, the Software, to any Third Party Users or End Users affected by such termination or expiration (or to refer such third parties to other cPanel licensees or affiliates). "
IANAL but...as I read that, if you decide to switch panels and let your license expire, WebPros can start pinging your customers about switching to WebPros' own service.
wtf???
they can sell hosting/email etc... to MY clients via MY site????
Hello, I sent you a private message.
No. It is the same as whmcs ssl upselling.
they should have done this 15 years ago. quite late in the business.
but ultimately why end-users will go with them if they are into ever-increasing prices yearly for their products.
Even Softaculous has also lauched something AI coder product which can build sites. They're marketing it to the hosting companies and soon offer it as standalone product with their 500 one-click apps like wordpress and wiki, etc.
The real value is keeping pricing affordable, good and fast support. WebPros is one of the most greedy companies I've ever seen. So I will never choose them. Today I'll pay $1 next year they'll increase price by 20% then next year 20%. And then either I'm enduser I'll have to pay, if thats a web host reselling their cloud, then also ultimately enduser will have to pay.
WebPros is not meant for web pros.
they stated in the license agreement that they can contact your customer and offer them products once cPanel cancels your license or your license expires
but in the email fran posted, they seems just want you to become their reseller
Their license agreement may be challenged in court if they try to take over someones clients.
Haha ha its time to say goodbye to cPanel In this AI era if you have some programming knowledge it takes onlyt 3 months to build your own inhouse hosting panel and I already did it and for the last 6 months I have been completely license free Its such a peace of mind
The hard part of making a panel has always been security and AI doesn't help that much with it.
I agree. For small personal or hobby project, itll do. If you want to go public... No ai slop please.
cPanel at least have been flogging shared hosting for a very long time. Siteocity has been operational even since before Webpros, selling shared/reseller hosting and was operated by cPanel and even on cPanel's network/AS.
That was at least a lot more subtle (and I believe the reason Siteocity was acquired was to act as an in-house test ground). This isn't a great pivot from WebPros... but VCs & PE firms love SaaSification.
Didn't they change their licensing model from a host type license to user number license a couple years ago? Did that change get them access to actual customer contacts or just a count?
There's "can" as not impossible and then "can" as in fully will.
Pretty devious multi-step plan if so.
And charging upto 69$/mo for a license, depending on the number of users?
How's that for business ethics?
At this point I won't be much surprised if they start showing ads on websites, then charge extra for opting out.
Currently ai is better analysing and detect security flaws of any script and software so better make your own panel if you spend more than 1000 dollars monthly in licence it will save u a lot and less headache but you should know some programming and u know what u r doing and it should not be 100 percent vibe coding
Even we detect some security holes in exim using ai which we fixed ourself in our server
If more hosts had already made in-house panels, or even better helped mutually contribute to a open-source alternative, there would already be an option
I doubt they will be LET prices, i think we will not be able to afford them anyway..
When there is no price on display, stay the fuck away
Thanks for raising these concerns. We understand why the announcement was interpreted this way, and we’d like to provide some additional context.
WebPros Cloud is built as a partner-first, partner-only platform. Partners can offer these services under their own brand, set their own pricing, and continue to own their customer relationships. WebPros Cloud is not intended to sell these services directly to end customers.
The idea behind WebPros Cloud is simple: many partners have told us they want to spend less time managing infrastructure and day-to-day operations, and more time focused on growing their business, supporting customers. We provide underlying infrastructure, platform and operational support that make this possible.
WebPros has always been a B2B business, and our success is tied directly to the success of our partners. WebPros Cloud was created to help partners grow faster and more efficiently, not compete with them.
For anyone interested in learning more about the model and how it works in practice, we’ve shared additional details here:
https://www.webpros.cloud/how-to-scale-hosting-business-without-managing-infrastructure/
In my opinion, the hosting industry needs at least 5 or 6 strong paid control panel providers and More competition benefits everyone.
cPanel is not worth more than $15 per month Considering its pricing history and recent security issues, I think a fair price would be around $10 per month for an unlimited account license
also cPanel should focus on being a control panel instead of trying to sell every possible add-on service. Most hosting companies are not interested in becoming resellers of cPanel's ecosystem and They just want a stable, secure, affordable server management platform.
FOCUS on your panel security first.
You did not address the elephant on the room.
If I use your products like cpanel for 10 years and then switch to directadmin, will you message all my customers and try to steal them as is allowed according to your license agreement?
I dont know what the point of asking is. The answer doesnt matter as long as its stated in the agreement.
It might be in the agreement to deal with hosts who are using cP with an expired license
If people keep paying, there is no incentive for them to change it.
Absolute fucking garbo.
So you want to transition the basic sysadmin workload, for a fully services e2e business model where every company relies on your even more, have an even harder time migrating else-where, and deal with your services in the case of failures, or issues. (At a higher cost, and lower profit margin)
You do not make an entirely customer focused business model, with entire suite of plans simply because you was occasional told people are spending to much time handling infrastructure - this is literally the only profit margin left as you steal so much already for your software licences, you want an entire world selling your products you might as-well make a re-seller API and be done with it and scrap CPANEL at that rate, braindead logic from a bullshit underpaid employee blowing the corporate smoke up our asses nice try.
In no way, is this an acceptable or even remotely okay licence policy they are talking about taking / stealing a persons career, or in case of a larger provider entire companies worth of people careers if they was to ever action it.
If it’s not removed, it can never be trusted they won’t try.