If you’re a cPanel or WHMCS license holder, you probably got an email from WebPros (who owns both products) announcing that they’re going to start competing with you for your customers.

It’s a pretty shocking development, but apparently WebPros is going to start offering shared hosting, WordPress hosting, email hosting, and additional cloud services “as they become available”.

This puts them in direct competition with their own customers.  In other words, if you are a hosting company that uses cPanel or WHMCS, the maker of those products is now competing with you!

How grating…you’ll be paying a monthly license fee to a company that is now going to try to sell the same services you offer to your customers.  And WebPros has a built-in price advantage (they don’t have to pay cPanel or WHMCS licensing fees).

And it gets worse…

I reviewed the cPanel license agreement.  Turns out that if you’re a hosting provider who licensed cPanel, you’ve explicitly given cPanel the right to contact all of your customers in the event cPanel cancels your license or if it expires.

“cPanel shall also have the right (but not the obligation) to notify any Third Party Users or an End User that cPanel will or has terminated, suspended or disabled their use of the Software due to the termination or expiration of this Agreement or a breach of this Agreement. In the event that cPanel notifies Third Party Users or an End User pursuant to the preceding sentence, cPanel reserves the right to offer products and services, including, without limitation, the Software, to any Third Party Users or End Users affected by such termination or expiration (or to refer such third parties to other cPanel licensees or affiliates). “

In other words, if you decide you want to switch from cPanel to another panel and let your cPanel expire, WebPros has the right to contact all of your customers and entice them to switch to WebPros’ own hosting.

Here’s the text of the full email from WebPros:

Dear WebPros Partner,

You are receiving this message as a contractual notification under your existing partnership with WebPros.

We are pleased to inform you that WebPros Cloud and its portfolio of cloud-delivered services are now available to WebPros partners, providing new opportunities to expand your services, accelerate growth, and deliver modern solutions without the complexity of managing underlying infrastructure.

WebPros Cloud is a fully managed, partner-first ecosystem designed to help you launch and scale services under your own brand, backed by global infrastructure, automated operations, and the trusted WebPros brand.

Available WebPros Cloud Products

Through WebPros Cloud, partners can access and offer a growing portfolio of solutions, including (subject to technical availability):

• Managed Cloud for WordPress, fully managed, high performance WordPress hosting
• WebPros Nova, AI-powered website and application building solution
• WHMCS Cloud, full power of WHMCS, infrastructure-free SaaS experience
• Business Email, a professional email platform designed for reliability and recurring revenue
• Premium Shared Hosting, built for performance and reliability Additional WebPros Cloud services as they become available

These solutions are designed to help partners diversify offerings, create new revenue streams, and bring cloud services to market faster

raindog308

raindog308 is a longtime community LETizen, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, raindog308 runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, raindog308 has a life-long love of German Shepherd Dogs, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, playing guitar, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.