Virtual private servers have become more accessible and dependable than ever — and that’s why a growing number of entrepreneurs are launching their own hosting businesses on VPS platforms. The appeal is obvious: a VPS delivers root access, dedicated resources, and the flexibility to configure your server however you like, all without the expense of a dedicated machine.
For years, cPanel has been the go-to option for resellers selling hosting from a VPS. But there’s one issue that’s getting harder to overlook: the cost. cPanel has increased its prices every single year for the past six years, and today a license covering just 5 accounts runs $23.00 per month — nearly the same as our KVM 8 VPS, which costs $29.00 per month. For anyone just getting a hosting business off the ground, paying almost as much for the control panel as for the server itself is a serious financial burden.
Of course, cPanel does have one major advantage: name recognition. It’s been around so long that many customers are comfortable with its interface, and some people even use “cPanel” as a generic term for any hosting control panel. That’s something resellers can’t ignore — even if they’d like to move to a more affordable option, their customers may prefer to stick with what they already know.
Hepsia: Our In-House Alternative to cPanel
At TrexHost, we’ve always favored building our own tools whenever we can. We created our own billing system, introduced the first-ever free reseller hosting program, and developed our own Web Hosting Control Panel — Hepsia. Over the years, Hepsia has grown increasingly popular among our VPS customers, and today 80% of newly purchased servers are ordered with Hepsia. So why are so many VPS customers choosing it over cPanel? Here are four key reasons.
1. Price
When you’re selling hosting, your monthly expenses directly affect how much you can earn. The more you spend on server resources and software licenses, the more you have to charge your customers to turn a profit — and cPanel licensing has become a significant expense, especially for smaller resellers. Its prices have risen for six consecutive years, and if there’s another increase in January 2027, that will make it seven.
A license for 5 cPanel accounts currently costs $23.00 per month — that’s $4.60 per account just for the control panel, and you still have to pay for the VPS. For example, if your server costs $30.00 per month, your total monthly expense with cPanel comes to $53.00. With five accounts, that’s $10.60 per account just to cover the server and control panel costs, and you haven’t made any profit yet. If you want to keep one account for your own websites, you’re left with only four accounts to sell. You can reduce the cost per account by purchasing a larger cPanel license, but that doesn’t help much when you’re starting out with only a handful of customers.
How much does Hepsia cost? Hepsia comes free with your VPS, and you can also create 5 additional hosting accounts at no extra cost, giving you 6 accounts in total including your main one. With a $30.00 VPS, that works out to $5.00 per account if you’re using all six. And if you need more accounts, you can add another 50 for just $5.00 per month — only $0.10 per additional account. For a small reseller, the difference is considerable: you can keep your hosting prices affordable without spending most of your income on licenses.
2. Usability
One reason cPanel remains popular is that so many people already know how to use it. It’s been around for decades, and customers who have managed websites before are often familiar with its interface. But cPanel also carries some of its history with it: although its design has changed over the years, the way the panel is organized still follows much of the same approach it used in the early 2000s. That’s fine if you already know your way around it, but for someone managing their first website, it can take some time to get used to.
With Hepsia, we’ve had more freedom to change how things work. We’ve redesigned the panel several times over the years, making common hosting tasks easier to find and use, while trying not to move things around unnecessarily so that customers who have used Hepsia for years still know where to find what they need. Our goal is to make the panel comfortable for existing users and easy to understand for beginners — and when you’re reselling hosting, that’s important. If your customers can manage their websites, email accounts, and domains without constantly asking for help, that’s better for everyone.
3. Speed
There’s another difference between cPanel and Hepsia that isn’t immediately obvious: cPanel runs directly on your VPS, which means the control panel itself uses some of your server’s RAM, CPU, and storage. If you have a powerful server, you may barely notice it, but if you’re running a smaller VPS, those resources matter — whatever the control panel uses is no longer available for your customers’ websites, databases, email, and applications. cPanel also has its own hardware requirements, and on a server with limited resources, running the control panel alongside several hosting accounts can affect performance.
Hepsia works differently. It doesn’t run entirely on your VPS: the hosting operations still take place on your server, but the control panel interface and some of its backend processes run on separate servers. As a result, Hepsia uses fewer of your VPS resources, leaving more RAM and CPU power available for your websites, applications, databases, and email services. It also means the control panel can remain responsive even when your VPS is under heavy load — for a reseller managing several customer accounts on one server, that’s a useful advantage.
4. Faster Development
One thing we particularly like about Hepsia is that we develop it ourselves, so we don’t have to depend on another company when we want to add a feature, change how something works, or fix a problem. Our development team is smaller than cPanel’s, but there are a few reasons we can still make changes quickly.
First, Hepsia has a relatively modern codebase — a few years ago, we made major changes to its internal structure, and that work made it easier to develop new features and improve existing ones. Second, we don’t have to support every possible server configuration. cPanel is designed to work across many different hosting environments, with different hardware and software setups, and supporting all those combinations takes time and adds complexity. Hepsia is different because we know exactly which servers and software it runs on. We manage that environment ourselves, so our developers can focus on the features our customers actually need, which also makes testing and troubleshooting easier. For our resellers, it means we can respond to feedback, fix issues, and introduce new features without waiting for a third-party software provider — and since we use Hepsia across our own hosting services, we’re constantly working with the same tools our customers use every day.
So, Hepsia or cPanel?
cPanel is still a good choice, especially if your customers already use it and don’t want to switch to something unfamiliar — its popularity and long history are real advantages. But the cost of running cPanel on a VPS has become difficult to justify for some smaller hosting businesses. With Hepsia, you don’t need to pay for a separate control panel license: you get 5 additional hosting accounts free with your VPS, and adding more costs very little. Hepsia also uses fewer server resources, and because we develop it ourselves, we can keep improving it based on what our customers need. If you’re just starting out, or you’re trying to keep your hosting costs down, these differences are worth considering. In the end, the choice depends on your customers, your budget, and how you plan to grow your hosting business.
Want to try Hepsia for yourself? See the demo, or start a free trial hosting account to test it firsthand — no commitment required.