Input Enormous price increases yet again for 2025

[Tim_Wakeling]

This seems to have become a recurring theme, and it is not a good one. Plesk has started seriously pressing into price gouging, and I can only imagine it's because switching Web server panels is such a non-trivial thing to do, and they calculate that most people will simply pay up.

Today Plesk informed me that the 2025 price for my Web Host Edition will be £659.81 including VAT. That's a 23% increase on last year's price of £534.67, and a 205% increase on 2017 when it was only £216 for the year.

The Bank of England inflation calculator shows that inflation between 2017 and now should have increased the price from £216 to £280.57. So these increases are not even remotely justified by the inflation excuse. What is the justification, then?

These increases are not sustainable. As a host for my clients, I do not use the reseller features. I would only need Pro, except for the 30 domain limit. If that were removed, it would soften the blow somewhat ... for now. But we are still getting used to bracing for larger and larger percentage increases every year, and it is not acceptable.

 

[Maarten]

Plesk is a part of WebPros, which in turn is owned by Oakley Capital. You can find more information about their portfolio of companies here:

https://www.oakleycapital.com/our-companies/?sector=Technology&status=Current

As long as shareholders want to see profits, I don’t think prices will go down. It’s common for companies owned by investment firms to raise prices to meet financial goals and provide returns to investors. The recent price increase of 23% is quite high and may be due to broader market trends and the need to continue developing and supporting Plesk’s features.

However, there is a point at which customers might start looking for alternatives if prices keep rising. We see this trend in the mobile market, where constant price increases push consumers to seek cheaper options. If Plesk continues to raise its prices, it risks losing customers to competitors offering more affordable solutions.

This situation can be frustrating for users, especially when they feel the impact of rising costs. Ultimately, the decisions made by investment firms and their focus on profit can shape the direction of pricing, making it crucial for Plesk to balance its financial goals with customer satisfaction.

I agree that Plesk should consider offering the reseller option separately, instead of including it in the highest-priced Host plan. This feature might not be widely used, so making it optional could lower the cost of that plan and make it more appealing to users.

 

[Maarten]

Despite the pricing policies influenced by Oakley Capital as the investment company behind Plesk, I’m still incredibly proud of what they’ve built since Plesk v8. IMHO, it’s simply a fantastic system. Of course, there are some less favorable aspects, like pushing Plesk services to our clients, which means they end up earning from our clients directly without us being involved. And some bugs just don’t seem to get fixed. But honestly, I think other panels have their own set of challenges as well.

 

[Kaspar]

Plesk is a part of WebPros, which in turn is owned by Oakley Capital. You can find more information about their portfolio of companies here:

https://www.oakleycapital.com/our-companies/?sector=Technology&status=Current

Oakley sold Webpros almost 5 years ago. Not that it matters much, it certainly does not matter within the context of the subject of this thread. However Oakley's name keeps getting mentioned in these types of threads, so I feel this might be good to clarify this anyway

 

[Maarten]

Ah, I misread the portfolio.

https://www.oakleycapital.com/our-companies/webpros

Well, they are to blame for this. Who puts a company in their portfolio when they sold it years ago?

 

[J.Wick]

There are solid points on this thread regarding what happens to products and services owned by investment companies.


Plesk Web Host Pro Edition Monthly (PLSK-PRO-M)

• 2014 $7.25
• 2015 $14.25
• 2017 $14.25
• 2018 $12.75
• 2020 $14.03
• 2023 $17.43
• 2024 $19.43
• 2025 $26.99
• 2026 $2,025.99 (est.)

I'm done; this is ridiculous. I'm looking at CloudPanel as an alternative.

 

[Maarten]

I discovered that Oakley Capital, the parent company of Plesk and WebPros, actually sold WebPros to another investment firm, CVC Fund, back in 2019.
Here’s the article:
Oakley Capital agrees sale of WebPros to CVC Fund VII

So, the cycle continues with price increases, as those investments need to generate returns. It’s absurd because it’s the end users who ultimately pay the price with these huge increases.

It feels like we're being squeezed for profits to satisfy investors, and it’s the customers who bear the burden. This kind of system isn’t sustainable in the long term.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

I understand that this situation is not ideal and I can see that there is constructive criticism in your feedback. Thank you, it is invaluable. I would like to encourage anyone willing to share their input on what improvements/features would in your opinion justify a price increase, what changes you would like to see in the future, even your own view of better structure of the licensing. Thank you in advance.

 

[clemensmol]

I understand that this situation is not ideal and I can see that there is constructive criticism in your feedback. Thank you, it is invaluable. I would like to encourage anyone willing to share their input on what improvements/features would in your opinion justify a price increase, what changes you would like to see in the future, even your own view of better structure of the licensing. Thank you in advance.

I see a lot of customers moving from WP to NextJS, but self hosting NextJS in Plesk is awful, most of these clients are now moving away from Plesk. The NodeJS hosting support on Plesk is subpar. NodeJS processes are automatically killed by Phassenger after some inactivity.

Blue green deployment options for NodeJS/WP projects

Some WordPress clients are moving to other panels. WPToolkit from Plesk is great, but lacks all the tools to improve WP performance. 1-click object caching for WP would be a great step forward.

Outgoing spam filtering should work out of the box.

Better backup options/extensions. SFTP, SSH or S3 server backups should be accessible by clients, just like the local backups. But they aren't.

Better tools to prevent common customer tickets, like making it easier for clients to setup their email accounts (correct ports, encryption, etc). Autodiscover just doesn't seem te work for most of my clients.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

Thank you for the invaluable input, @clemensmol.

 

[Sergio Manzi]

Farewell Plesk, hello Hestia!

 

[bhavishya]

Moing out of plesk on windows its way cheaper then buying the licence! Shifted few servers already.

 

[Azurel]

I just learned that Hetzner will discontinue Plesk support, at least for new server orders, starting in January 2025, because of the new pricing policy. This raises a lot of questions, especially when considering the current pricing. To give some perspective:

• The Web Pro Edition used to cost 11.66 € via Hetzner.
• Now, according to the official pricing on Plesk’s website (Plesk Pricing), it’s 20 € for the long-term plan.

That's nearly double the price—about as much as a 4K Netflix subscription!

I've been using Plesk for around 10 years and absolutely love its clean GUI, ease of management, and overall sense of security. However, over the years, it has been filled with features that I don’t need, yet I still pay for. Here’s a quick list of things I personally don’t use:

• Sitejet Builder
• WP Toolkit
• Subscription Management
• Account Management

For me, Plesk is mostly about private projects and mail management. I still need support for slightly more than 10 domains, but that’s it.

I would really appreciate it if Plesk offered a slimmed-down version of the "Web Pro Edition" as a licensing model or allowed us to book optional features separately instead of bundling them all. Does anyone else feel the same way? What are your thoughts on the pricing and feature set? Are there alternatives we should be considering?

 

[Hangover2]

We are also a Hetzner client, and we are not pleased that we are now forced to order directly from Plesk, as we do not need the additional support included in their direct pricing model.

Currently, we hold numerous licenses for the Web PRO Edition at a price of €11.66 per month. Going forward, the price for new licenses will be €22.99 per month, representing an increase of 97.2%. I do not blame Hetzner—they are simply summarizing what is currently wrong with Plesk:

"The provider's expansive pricing strategy and the low customer demand have prompted us to take this step." (ChatGPT translation)

Nevertheless, this decision will gradually prompt us to move away from Plesk. New servers will have the opportunity to be built on alternative solutions.

 

[notboring]

My hoster also dropped Plesk along with cPanel due to the price increases and suggested using a free GPL based admin tool instead.

I will seriously miss all those useful paid Plesk-Addons for Wordpress and Monitoring.

 

[D3nnis3n]

My hoster dropped Plesk and cPanel completely and other providers notified me they are either going to drop it as well or at least cannot sell licenses anymore without a server product - but I have no intent to move away from my provider that offers exactly what we need in terms of servers. That would mean the only remaining place to get a Plesk license would be here, horribly overpriced. Seems we need to look for a open source alternative, as we did with ProxMox when VMWare went to the trash. Really sad, you should reconsider what you are doing there, it's absolutely anti-consumer and hopefully in the end only hurts you.

I understand that this situation is not ideal and I can see that there is constructive criticism in your feedback. Thank you, it is invaluable. I would like to encourage anyone willing to share their input on what improvements/features would in your opinion justify a price increase, what changes you would like to see in the future, even your own view of better structure of the licensing. Thank you in advance.

Nothing - the price is already too high. We want a steady price, not more features. Ridiculous!

 

[UHolthausen]

Hello

I also received such a mail from my hoster yesterday, I will probably switch to a free interface.....

 

[Mike99]

Feedback for @Sebahat.hadzhi and everyone else from the company behind Plesk

The recent price increase for Plesk is neither justified by inflation nor product improvements. As a long-time legacy customer using Plesk through Hetzner, I manage 25 servers. I switched from cPanel to Plesk because of cPanel’s pricing policies. Paying more for a software license than some hardware already felt excessive, but now the increasing costs, combined with unnecessary extensions and features nobody requested, are frustrating. Basic features like antivirus and spam filtering with ham/spam integrated should be included, not added at an extra cost as paid plugins.

Also it is very rude to increase pricing for the product and aggressively up-sell our customers, from time to time, without any warning I learn that my customers see offers that I need to turn off by Googling the documentation and adding unnecessary lines to panel.ini.

No customer wants the annual stress of wondering what Plesk will do with pricing. Learning that Hetzner—one of the most reliable and stable partners—has dropped Plesk was a wake-up call. This signals a significant problem: a nearly 100% price increase for the same product moving directly to Plesk suggests greed rather than value. This pattern indicates that the price-to-quality ratio is deteriorating. It also tells you about the margin and how much to product really costs and what could be the real price.

If Plesk is testing how much customers will tolerate price hikes, it may backfire. Migration away from a platform isn't immediate; customers plan and prepare. By the time they’re ready to switch, their decision is final, and no incentive will convince them to stay. Losing trusted distributors like Hetzner will hurt, and compensating for these losses with further price increases will only exacerbate the problem.

I am willing to pay up to €35 per server, but anything beyond that isn’t justified by the current offering. I don't think is fair to pay more for software, than for the infrastructure, where server providers have to deal with pricing of electricity, building construction, buying land to build on, IPs, contracting connectivity, employing highly skilled technicians, buying servers, taking a lot of risk to make sure servers will sell in current configuration, building or leasing software to orchestrate all of this and you want the similar price tag, with 1000% margin.

If other readers know open source alternatives to Plesk, please PM me, I want to move some of my servers to software more financially stable as I am providing low cost services. I am looking for something to invest into, so the money I pay monthly goes to the right people that will listen to what is the next feature I want, keeping it lean and cheap.

 

[D3nnis3n]

I would also be interested in Open Source alternatives (especially such including DNS / Mail, not just webhosting) or any alternative that has a fair pricing of ~5 € / month for personal use servers (and I do not need any of the special apps like SiteJet or WordPress and whatnot that Plesk offers, I've been paying for Pro without needing anything but the base functionality and the server view), of which I need to migrate a dozen away from Plesk with my provider no longer offering it. I already found a few alternatives, but it will take a while to assess them all, so any input is appreciated.

12,99 € as Plesk will now ask for the lowest tier is more than double a fair ask for my usage. I currently pay less than 7 € for each Plesk license. For that money I can get a small cloud server with backup plan - insane. Even my Microsoft Subscriptions are cheaper.

 

[manni]

Totally agree, we will cancel all licenses by end of year.