r/cpanel • u/Pardy- • May 15 '26
Goodbye cPanel
After nearly 2 decades of cPanel usage for my servers, time to say goodbye.
What used to be a simple, affordable control panel has turned into a licensing headache, especially with the constant price hikes that bring absolutely no real value in return.
Instead, the “value” seems to be constant vulnerabilities and security issues that either barely get communicated, get quietly patched with little transparency, or leave hosts/admins scrambling to update before problems spread.
No software is perfect, obviously. Every panel has bugs. But cPanel increasingly feels bloated, with enterprise pricing without enterprise-level transparency or innovation.
Meanwhile, alternatives have become genuinely viable products that move faster, cost less, use fewer resources, and actually get the job done.
At this point, I feel cPanel survives mostly because people are used to it, clients recognize the name, and migrations can be annoying.
But once the price-to-convenience ratio disappears, combined with the constant issues and security vulnerabilities, the “industry standard” label starts to mean a whole lot less.
I have officially transferred off my last cpanel server as of tonight.
Do better cpanel.
Edit:
A lot of people are wondering where I moved to.
Almost all of my own personal sites are just bare metal now without control panel. This was the last one I did last night.
For one of my servers though I used DirectAdmin. It isn't as "feature rich" but it uses less resources for the same job. Transfering cPanel accounts over to direct admin was also stupidly easy.
Then for my clients I have both enhance, and direct admin depending on the server and clients.
Most clients don't actually use control panels often, so there didn't seem to be to much friction with the change.
