In Cpanel forums, a user asked what would happen to his server if he quit paying the annual fee for the cpanel control panel software: http://forums.cpanel.net/f5/terminate-license-170594.html
- If I were to cancel my cpanel license, would my websites still work?
- I know I won't be able to use cpanel itself but the sites I've created, email accounts databases etc will they continue to function?
This response was given by cpaneljared, who is "cpanel staff":
 | At the present time, with no active cPanel license, all services except cPanel, the WebHost Manager and Webmail will continue to function. Apache, mail, FTP and so on will not be affected.
This is subject to change in future versions of the product, however, so it should not be relied upon long-term. |
"Software as a service" is a great risk to users because you get locked in to paying fees forever.
I saw this today because i am busy trying to fix the FTP server that cpanel is managing for me on my server. I have no idea why the FTP service is not running, but given that it was running last week, and I haven't touched any configuration or software on the server in weeks, the only other alternative is that it is probably a cpanel update that has broken things. Someone else is having the exact same problem. I wrote this in response:
 | I am so tired of Cpanel updates breaking things in my server. It frys me when a hosting customer who pays $100 a year calls me and tells me that a service like FTP is suddenly not working. I login to the server and find that sure enough, the service is down, and I have no clue where to look to solve the problem. The whole point of having cpanel is so i don't have to worry about the details of managing the services on the server..... I waste lots of time looking in the forums, find other people having the same problem, and in the end they are told to put in a ticket, and there is no clue in the forum thread what was done to resolve their problem.
So I am forced to put in a ticket too, knowing that cpanel support will gripe that my server OS is "not supported", eventhough it was a supported choice when I originally setup the server and they installed cpanel... So I think about all the work to setup a new server on a more current OS, fool around with network settings, move all the sites, make sure everything still works, hassle with cpanel about getting the license transfered to the new system, risk screwups in DNS, email handling, etc., notify the handful of hosting customers I have if there are any changes or new procedures, notify them of the downtime... In the end, I spend a lot of hours of time due to a problem I didn't cause, trying to fix something for people who wont pay for the time to fix a problem they didn't cause...... In the best case scenario, cpanel breaking stuff in my server costs me 3 or 4 hours of dealing with the customer, dealing with their support ticket, arguing with them to get a fix, waiting for a fix, getting back to the customer, listening to them complain they couldn't do whatever for hours or days, etc..... It really toasts my buns that cpanel thinks it is appropriate to say "Apache, mail, FTP and so on will not be affected.... This is subject to change in future versions of the product, however, so it should not be relied upon long-term." How dare they think it would somehow be ok on a server they don't own to break software they didn't write, and without which they wouldn't have a product to sell, if someone decides they don't want to pay cpanel's ransom anymore. That is the height of audacity and customer service cluelessness. Maybe the "it" above, in the quote about what shouldn't be relied upon long-term, is cpanel. |
BTW, I paid for a three year license, and am only two years into the term. I'd like to cancel them now for breaking my server yet again, but I know I'd never get a refund of the last year.
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