u/Pardy-

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.

So, I did have a subscription with canva for quite some time. I've used them for years for a while for different things.

However, I stopped paying for their services as I was no longer in need of them.

Fast forward nearly a year (11 months) and I got a invoice showing paid, and money out of my account. I'm like wth? So I check, and I guess I never actually officially cancelled my subscription? (I turned off my paypal).

When I recovered my paypal, they hit it up almost immediately.

So you mean to tell me after almost an entire year of not having a subscription, you then still attempt payments? Wild. Kinda fucked up. Almost any other company would have auto cancelled the account.

Anyways, I will say one thing, I went to the website to get a refund, obviously as I'm not using their service. Their "AI" chat was actually ridiculously easy. I just said refund. They provided the latest invoice, I said yes, they said got it, this charge is for your active plan, do you want to continue, I said yes, they said got it, can you give me a reason, I told them basically I'm not using it.

Chat just said:
Alright, a refund has been approved.

• We’ll send your refund confirmation to ***email.
• Your bank or payment provider may take up to 21 days to complete your refund.
• You can still access your designs.

I'm not going to lie. I've never had a refund request be this easy, and this straight forward.

This is how a refund for almost any kind of SaaS should be. I will applaud Canva for that.