cPanel License Pricing Explained for Every Hosting Plan

cPanel licenses are priced by the number of cPanel accounts on your server, not by the server itself. This article explains what that means for your bill, which InMotion Hosting plans include cPanel at no extra cost, what VPS and Dedicated Server customers pay at each account tier, and how to keep your license cost from climbing as you add clients.

Why Is cPanel Billed by the Number of Accounts?

cPanel moved away from flat per-server licensing in mid-2019 and replaced it with tiers based on how many accounts a server hosts. Every host that runs cPanel pays under that model, and prices have risen each January since the change.

The published tiers are structured around account thresholds: Solo covers one account, Admin covers up to 5, Pro covers up to 30, and Premier covers up to 100, with a per-account charge above that. Your license cost tracks how many accounts you actually run, so a Dedicated Server with 12 accounts and one with 400 accounts pay very different rates on identical hardware.

That is why cPanel appears as its own line item on VPS, Dedicated Server, and cPanel-based plans instead of being folded into the base hosting price.

Which InMotion Hosting Plans Include cPanel at No Extra Cost?

Not every plan carries a separate license charge.

• Shared Hosting (Launch, Power, Pro) and Hosting for WordPress (WP Launch, WP Power, WP Pro) include cPanel in the plan price. There is no account-based license fee to calculate.
• Reseller Hosting includes the license. You are capped on account count rather than billed per account.
• Managed VPS Hosting and Managed Dedicated Servers carry a license priced by tier, listed as a separate line item at checkout.

The Shared Pro plan supports multiple cPanel accounts under one plan without a license charge, which makes it a practical option for agencies managing a small client roster before a VPS makes sense.

What Does a cPanel License Cost on Managed VPS Hosting?

Pricing scales with the account tier you select. Longer terms are billed as a multiple of the monthly rate.

Number of Accounts	1 Month	6 Month	1 Year	2 Year	3 Year
5	$29.50	$177.00	$354.00	$708.00	$1,062.00
30	$53.00	$318.00	$636.00	$1,272.00	$1,908.00
50	$61.50	$369.00	$738.00	$1,476.00	$2,214.00
100	$71.00	$426.00	$852.00	$1,704.00	$2,556.00
150	$73.00	$438.00	$876.00	$1,752.00	$2,628.00
200	$84.00	$504.00	$1,008.00	$2,016.00	$3,024.00
250	$103.00	$618.00	$1,236.00	$2,472.00	$3,708.00
300	$118.00	$708.00	$1,416.00	$2,832.00	$4,248.00
350	$134.00	$804.00	$1,608.00	$3,216.00	$4,824.00
400	$150.50	$903.00	$1,806.00	$3,612.00	$5,418.00
450	$166.50	$999.00	$1,998.00	$3,996.00	$5,994.00
500	$182.50	$1,095.00	$2,190.00	$4,380.00	$6,570.00
550	$199.00	$1,194.00	$2,388.00	$4,776.00	$7,164.00
600	$215.00	$1,290.00	$2,580.00	$5,160.00	$7,740.00
650	$231.00	$1,386.00	$2,772.00	$5,544.00	$8,316.00
700	$246.50	$1,479.00	$2,958.00	$5,916.00	$8,874.00
750	$263.00	$1,578.00	$3,156.00	$6,312.00	$9,468.00
800	$279.00	$1,674.00	$3,348.00	$6,696.00	$10,044.00
850	$295.00	$1,770.00	$3,540.00	$7,080.00	$10,620.00

Notice the jump between the 100 and 150 tiers is small, while the step from 200 to 250 is not. If you are close to a threshold, the next tier up is often worth buying ahead of the growth rather than after it.

What Does a cPanel License Cost on a Managed Dedicated Server?

Dedicated Server licenses start at the 100-account tier.

Number of Accounts	1 Month	3 Month	6 Month	1 Year	2 Year
100	$58.99	$176.97	$353.94	$707.88	$1,415.76
150	$88.99	$266.97	$533.94	$1,067.88	$2,135.76
200	$114.99	$344.97	$689.94	$1,379.88	$2,759.76
250	$131.99	$395.97	$791.94	$1,583.88	$3,167.76
300	$146.99	$440.97	$881.94	$1,763.88	$3,527.76
350	$161.99	$485.97	$971.94	$1,943.88	$3,887.76
400	$190.99	$572.97	$1,145.94	$2,291.88	$4,583.76
450	$204.99	$614.97	$1,229.94	$2,459.88	$4,919.76
500	$219.99	$659.97	$1,319.94	$2,639.88	$5,279.76
550	$234.99	$704.97	$1,409.94	$2,819.88	$5,639.76
600	$248.99	$746.97	$1,493.94	$2,987.88	$5,975.76
650	$263.99	$791.97	$1,583.94	$3,167.88	$6,335.76
700	$292.99	$878.97	$1,757.94	$3,515.88	$7,031.76
750	$299.99	$899.97	$1,799.94	$3,599.88	$7,199.76
800	$321.99	$965.97	$1,931.94	$3,863.88	$7,727.76
850	$336.99	$1,010.97	$2,021.94	$4,043.88	$8,087.76

If you add Premier Care to a server, a cPanel license is required: cPanel 5 on VPS plans and cPanel 100 on Dedicated Servers. The license remains its own charge alongside the bundle.

How Do cPanel Limits Work on Reseller Hosting?

Reseller Hosting plans are not billed for cPanel usage. Instead, each plan carries a fixed ceiling on child accounts.

Reseller Plans	Number of Child Accounts
R-1000N	Up to 25 Accounts
R-2000N	Up to 50 Accounts
R-3000N	Up to 80 Accounts
R-4000N	Up to 100 Accounts

Reseller plans top out at 100 accounts. Past that, your options are a cPanel VPS, a Dedicated Server, or a second Reseller plan.

What Counts as a cPanel Account?

One cPanel account equals one primary user with its own login, home directory, and main domain. Addon domains, subdomains, parked domains, email accounts, and databases created inside that account do not count separately.

This distinction matters for budgeting. An agency running 40 client sites as addon domains inside a single cPanel account sits in a low tier, but that setup gives every site shared file system access and no isolation between clients. Splitting those sites into separate accounts raises your license tier and gives each client true separation, independent backups, and a login you can hand over cleanly if the relationship ends.

What Happens When You Reach Your Account Limit?

WHM will not let you create accounts beyond the licensed count. New account creation fails, and any automated provisioning through WHMCS or an API integration fails with it.

Upgrading the license tier resolves it. Contact Support or adjust the license through your account, and the new limit applies without downtime or migration.

How to Check Your Current cPanel Account Count

Before you buy or renew, confirm where you actually stand. Log in to WHM and check List Accounts for a full count, or follow the steps for finding how many cPanel accounts you have.

Compare that number against your current tier. Servers that have been running for a few years often carry abandoned accounts from former clients, and those still count.

How to Lower Your cPanel License Cost

Four practical steps, in the order most likely to save money:

1. Audit and consolidate or remove unused cPanel accounts in WHM. Notify affected users first, and take backups before deleting anything.
2. Buy a longer license term. Multi-year pricing locks your rate against the annual increases cPanel has applied every January since 2019.
3. Keep your server on a supported operating system. cPanel now applies an extended lifecycle support surcharge to servers running end-of-life distributions, which adds cost on top of the license itself.
4. Right-size the tier. Paying for 500 accounts while running 180 is a recurring expense with no return.

When Does Moving Off cPanel Make Sense?

For servers with high account counts, the license can rival the cost of the hardware. Two alternatives are worth evaluating.

Control Web Panel (CWP) is available on InMotion Hosting VPS and Dedicated Server plans and supports unlimited end-user panels, plus a cPanel import function for migrating existing accounts. Pricing does not scale with account count.

Experienced system administrators running bare metal servers can also install a free panel such as HestiaCP. Avoid Vesta Control Panel: the original project has been unmaintained since 2018 and carries unpatched security vulnerabilities, so we no longer recommend it for production servers. HestiaCP is the actively maintained fork and imports Vesta backups directly.

The tradeoff is real. cPanel has the deepest third-party integration support, and moving off it means retraining clients on a new interface.

When to Contact Support

Reach out to our 24/7 support team if you need help sizing a license before a client onboarding push, planning an account cleanup on a busy server, or evaluating whether CWP fits your workflow. If you are weighing a plan change alongside the license, contact our team so pricing on both is calculated together.