Input Enormous price increases yet again for 2025

[manni]

We have cancelled appx. 45 licenses in the last days. Was a joint decision with other Partners and customers as well. 20 more to follow upcoming week. All 3rd Party licenses have been cancelled as well.

Not only because of pricing, primarily because of the Communication way. Sad, es we use Plesk since Version 7.

 

[Polli]

We have cancelled appx. 45 licenses in the last days. Was a joint decision with other Partners and customers as well. 20 more to follow upcoming week. All 3rd Party licenses have been cancelled as well.

Not only because of pricing, primarily because of the Communication way. Sad, es we use Plesk since Version 7.

Yepp. Another point that I have not yet addressed. The support is unfortunately poor. My requests are often not understood and/or the answers do not match my question in the forum. I do not have a direct license from Plesk but through my server provider. If I have a problem, I have to talk to the support of my server provider instead of the manufacturer, as I am often told to write a ticket in the forum. This then costs me additional money. I hardly have any understanding for that. Plesk support is in urgent need of improvement.

 

[manni]

Yeah same here - we also have to go through Partners for Support. We will not change to any other Control Panel, we will go back to good old bash scripts for 80% of the configuration tasks. Just got the Information from my colleagues that another 30 Plesk Servers are schedulded to be cancelled until end of February / Early March.

 

[Bitpalast]

Yepp. Another point that I have not yet addressed. The support is unfortunately poor. My requests are often not understood and/or the answers do not match my question in the forum. I do not have a direct license from Plesk but through my server provider. If I have a problem, I have to talk to the support of my server provider instead of the manufacturer, as I am often told to write a ticket in the forum. This then costs me additional money. I hardly have any understanding for that. Plesk support is in urgent need of improvement.

Actually, Plesk support is THE perfect support, the best you can get. Your issue is not Plesk support. Your issue is that you do NOT have Plesk support, but are going through your service provider. And obviously their support is poor. Instead, try Plesk support directly. Use the 30 days free trial for it. It'll be a whole new quality experience, because they really know how to deliver support.

 

[LTUser]

..... Your issue is that you do NOT have Plesk support, but are going through your service provider.

And obviously their support is poor. Instead, try Plesk support directly. Use the 30 days free trial for it. It'll be a whole new quality experience, because they really know how to deliver support.

But that sounds like a defensive claim, because how are new customers in particular supposed to know that Plesk sells its products to resellers who do not (want to) offer any meaningful support for them? (~Hetzner)

Then there are customers like us who have not needed support for years, but still have to pay higher prices?
Or customers who would like to have new features in basic functions, but are constantly ignored.

As an example, I will mention Apache2, for which you first have to use additional resources like nginx to get HTTP2 or PHP optimization, but you don't want to use them at all because of the overhead. (...)

For customers like me, the product has not improved for years, but has only changed unnecessarily, yet the price is constantly increasing.

 

[Polli]

Actually, Plesk support is THE perfect support, the best you can get. Your issue is not Plesk support. Your issue is that you do NOT have Plesk support, but are going through your service provider. And obviously their support is poor. Instead, try Plesk support directly. Use the 30 days free trial for it. It'll be a whole new quality experience, because they really know how to deliver support.

I find this statement a little arrogant. This is a slap in the face for all hosters who offer Plesk. They also suffer from the bad support of Plesk. This is probably how this statement should be interpreted. Then it can only be in the interest of Plesk to improve the “bad” support of the hosters. Otherwise this is just a scam to make extra money. Unbelievable.
And why should I pay extra for support even though I already pay for the product. Perhaps Plesk should start to fundamentally rethink its pricing policy and support model. It is simply not a good business model to make customers pay for everything. Especially since the product is already way too expensive. Apart from the fact that some functions are still not properly integrated and constantly cause problems. If no improvements are made here, I will probably have to turn my back on Plesk after more than 10 years of using it.

 

[Bitpalast]

Peter Debik—now under Bitpalast—is clearly afraid that his revenue stream from Plesk will dry up if users and companies (like Hetzner) start boycotting Plesk or seeking alternatives.

I have no revenue stream from Plesk.

 

[Bitpalast]

I am not selling Plesk products, I do not work for Plesk and am not paid by Plesk. We use Plesk as the web server administration interface for users who lease a webhosting package. We do not charge extra and we do not sell individual Plesk licenses either.

My friends, you are trying to talk bad about Plesk. It's o.k., we luckily have freedom of opinion. But saying that the support of your provider sucks and then blaming Plesk for it is so obviously wrong that it already hurts. Unfortunately, Plesk license resellers normally have no or extremely bad support, although by a Plesk reseller agreement they ought to provide support to their users. Most don't, and the few who do do it in a very bad fashion as dozens of similar posts on this forum have shown. But again, this is not for a bad Plesk support. Plesk support has the big advantage, that it is not call center support by some interns, but engineer support by persons who know the product in depth.

And your argument on lacking Dovecot, Nginx or whatever support: You seem to expect a 360° Linux tech support. Plesk knows their product and will be happy to help out beyond, but you cannot possible expect a software vendor that you pay for "Plesk" to also support third-party applications in full. What we can all expect from them is that problems that are located in their product or in the interface between their product and other products are subject of support. Anything beyond, specifically OS support or support of third-party products is a bonus. Your position is like "Hey Microsoft, I have MS Office, but I expect you to support my HP printer driver, too."

 

[manni]

I am not selling Plesk products, I do not work for Plesk and am not paid by Plesk. We use Plesk as the web server administration interface for users who lease a webhosting package. We do not charge extra and we do not sell individual Plesk licenses either.

My friends, you are trying to talk bad about Plesk. It's o.k., we luckily have freedom of opinion. But saying that the support of your provider sucks and then blaming Plesk for it is so obviously wrong that it already hurts. Unfortunately, Plesk license resellers normally have no or extremely bad support, although by a Plesk reseller agreement they ought to provide support to their users. Most don't, and the few who do do it in a very bad fashion as dozens of similar posts on this forum have shown. But again, this is not for a bad Plesk support. Plesk support has the big advantage, that it is not call center support by some interns, but engineer support by persons who know the product in depth.

And your argument on lacking Dovecot, Nginx or whatever support: You seem to expect a 360° Linux tech support. Plesk knows their product and will be happy to help out beyond, but you cannot possible expect a software vendor that you pay for "Plesk" to also support third-party applications in full. What we can all expect from them is that problems that are located in their product or in the interface between their product and other products are subject of support. Anything beyond, specifically OS support or support of third-party products is a bonus. Your position is like "Hey Microsoft, I have MS Office, but I expect you to support my HP printer driver, too."

Fully agree…!

 

[IgorG]

Someone who, for years, has done nothing useful on the forum but spread mudslinging and disparage Plesk, who has practically never come here seeking help with a specific issue, who has never contributed or helped anyone here - this person is now lecturing about the quality of technical support? It’s unlikely he's ever even reached out to support for help. Just read his posts, look at his avatars - everything is saturated with irrational hatred.

And Peter, who has done so much for this community and, with his exceptional expertise, has helped hundreds of people here, earning immense respect and authority. Whom do you trust more when they talk about Plesk’s technical support? Personally, I can’t judge its current quality, and I admit it might have declined. But I wouldn’t recommend taking the word of an outright hater. Instead, I’d take the arguments of a respected expert into account.

 

[Bitpalast]

If you are unsatisfied with a support case, I suggest to present the case and support's response in a forum thread. Surely the most active members here will review it and give further advice.

Regarding the price increase: We all agree and are all affected by it. What purpose does it serve to repeat the fact over and over again?

 

[Bitpalast]

Let us hear your suggestions.

 

[IgorG]

But let’s stop derailing this thread

Really, stop clogging up the thread with your endless suffering and mockery. You've been doing it for about five years now and I wonder how the moderators still tolerate it.

Yes, prices are going up. Yes, it hurts. Yes, fuel and meat prices at the shop are going up too. Yes, the world is unfair and not perfect. Yes, Plesk has reasons to do it and they have their business strategy for it. Yes, you can choose not to pay more for Plesk and switch to other panels. The market will decide everything. Yes, I think that for the time being these boycotts and switching to other panels like a drop in the bucket for Plesk.

And what do you expect to hear for so many years in this thread? That Plesk will officially apologise for its business strategy? Or what?

 

[Hangover2]

@Deleted member Based on your screenshots, you had approximately 30 support requests in the last 12 months and many more before. This is exactly the type of use case for which the direct Plesk licenses without a reseller is priced. If you compare the hourly rate of a skilled technician handling such requests, just one support ticket could cost the equivalent of several months' license fees. Actually, I would even say that the price for such a high level of support is too low right now. In our company, we could not afford to provide such support for $26.99 per month for a dedicated server. I think this model only works because many customers like us do not have such high support demands. We have had 0 support requests in the last 10 years. Our own technicians and the forum here are normally sufficient.

My recommendation for Plesk would be to sell licenses without technical support. For example, sell the Web Pro Edition for $10 a month without technical support and charge clients who need this helping hand $30 a month (still an amazing deal). This would sound fair to me. Also, reintroduce a small budget Web Admin Edition for $5. This would help a lot of people. I think most of the frustration with pricing comes from people who don't really need the support but need to calculate quite strictly in their hosting business.

Just my two cents...

 

[Repair-M]

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.

In fact, the cost of servers is quite adequate, despite this increase in prices.

 

[Bitpalast]

We only have 60.000 hosting accounts (DirectAdmin, Plesk and some others) spread over 1400 servers.

Really? Would you then not be a Plesk partner and be entitled to free support anyway?

I am off.

Great.

 

[manni]

Really? Would you then not be a Plesk partner and be entitled to free support anyway?


Great.

We have appx. 400-450 Servers Hosting a few thousand Domains and WebPros declined us to get a Partner Status. We tried it again together with another company and it was again declined.

One Partner informed us now, that they will not Hand out licenses for Servers that Host more then 150 Domains. They say it is agreed with WebPros…

 

[manni]

Maybe also interesting: We always have contracts for Web Host Edition, the Range for Pricing is between 4.99 and 40 USD per month. USD 4.99 licenses have been cancelled now by the relevant Partner. The 40 USD licenses We have cancelled.

Price that we currently consume (for appx 200 Hosts) is 20 EUR through 6 Partners.

 

[Hangover2]

But let’s be honest—nothing has jumped by 40% in a single year.

A number of services have increased by more than 40% for us in just one year—for instance, our Adobe or Codeium licenses. I view this in a positive light: new players will enter the market, driving innovation, and it also prompts us to ask whether there might be better, more cost-effective solutions. We apply the same logic with our own products: if a competitor raises prices too much and we spot an opportunity to capture a share of their market, we step in.

And never forget: in 100 years, there’s a greater than 99% chance that Plesk won’t exist anymore—and neither will I. So don’t take things too seriously, and enjoy our ever-changing world!

 

[hschramm]

One Partner informed us now, that they will not Hand out licenses for Servers that Host more then 150 Domains. They say it is agreed with WebPros…

How does this work? If you order a webhost edition, which is unlimited domains, how do they now that you will host more than 150 domains. and why should they limit it to this strange value? sounds strange to me.