Thanks for taking the time to speak with us, Mr. Lee.  Where are you located?

We operate from Singapore

How did you get involved in hosting and selling control panel licenses?

We are a team who have graduated working in the hosting and SaaS industry. By learning from previous job experiences on the pain and struggles of service providers and customers with the high cost of investment for the tools and solutions they need to pay to maintain their web presence, we decided to step into the industry with the sole aim of helping the customer to make savings on their investment all those tools and solutions.

So just to get us started on the right foot, the “CP” in “CPLicense” stands for “Control Panel” and not “cPanel” right? cPanel gutted their reseller programs, didn’t they?

Yep, “CP” stands for “Control Panel”. And yes, cPanel has already revoked its reseller program. With the experience we have had so far from Plesk license distribution, we have managed to get approval and have recently been officially signed up as the cPanel License Distributor as well.

What is CPLicense’s main focus?

Primary focus is to be a value-added licensed reseller to help service providers, businesses, webmasters, and developers needing the tools and solutions they need to manage their websites/emails by paying a lot less compared to the retail pricing.

Let’s talk about some products you carry. I’ve always heard that Plesk was bigger in Europe than the US but I keep running into it here. What’s your take on Plesk vs. cPanel?

Plesk does have a much bigger market share and is the preferred control panel in Europe and Japan. cPanel dominates the shared hosting control panel market in the rest of the world. Both products have similarities when it comes to shared and reseller hosting management.

Plesk is the leading WebOps hosting platform to run, automate and grow applications, websites, and hosting businesses. Being the only OS-agnostic platform, Plesk has simplified the lives of SysAdmins and SMBs since the early 2000s and continues to add value across multiple cloud services.

cPanel provides the most reliable and intuitive shared hosting management platform. With a rich feature set and customer-first support, cPanel’s automated and configurable platform enables service providers to focus on growing their businesses.

And of course, you know I’m going to ask you next about how DirectAdmin fits in that equation.

DirectAdmin is one of many other control panels that is available for hosting companies.Plesk and cPanel are the leading two control panels when it comes to market share, customer experience & user-friendly interface, extensive features, and advanced security options. DirectAdmin offers a low-cost option, making it a popular choice for smaller websites and budget-conscious users and of course with the limited features as well.

Is your goal for CPLicense to be a “one stop shop” for hosts? They get their panel, their security (Immunify360), backup (Acronis), monitoring, etc. from you, right

That’s right.

I looked at Platform360. $5/month (er, only $3.49/month on discount!) to get started for a pretty comprehensive server check from 26 sites sounds like a great value. How’s that product doing for you?

Platform360 has been a great monitoring tool and it has received great enhancement from the WebPros team. With so much integration made available recently, this helps customers to always stay alert on their server and website availability and receive notifications whenever an interruption happens.

Immunify360 is a nice product. Do you plan to offer other CloudLinux products?

We have CloudLinux as well and are exploring having more bundles of other solutions like ImunifyEmail when a stable release is made available. Aside from Imunify360, we also make available the alternative BitNinja available for our customers to choose from.

Where does CPLicense go from here?

We will keep on our mission in helping more businesses, hosting service providers, and web professionals in lowering their entrance and ongoing cost for all the tools and solutions they need to stay successful online.

What’s your take on the future of the hosting industry?

Until all businesses have a digital presence, we will continue to see an amazing journey of the hosting industry. It will continue to grow, as it did in previous years with an average double-digit CAGR. According to market watch, the global hosting industry market grew to $154b in 2022. Overall, the web hosting industry is expected to continue growing and evolving, with a focus on delivering better performance, security, and customer experience as well as e-commerce. The adoption of new technologies and trends will be key to staying competitive in the industry.

Anything else the community should know about your company?

Our goal is to serve as a comprehensive, value-added software reseller for service providers, SMBs, and web agencies, with an emphasis on reducing their software licensing expenses. Additionally, given the growing importance of Cybersecurity for businesses, we plan to incorporate related solutions into our service offerings for our customers.