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Finally moved off cPanel

General Discussion by harbourops 5 replies 339 views
harbourops

Member OP

#1

After eighteen months of evaluation, I finally moved my client sites off cPanel to a self-hosted open-source panel stack on Hetzner. The transition reduces my licensing overhead by about 94% annually.

New stack:

  • Web: OpenLiteSpeed / Apache selectable per account
  • Panel: HestiaCP (forked, hardened)
  • Database: MariaDB 10.11 with automated logical backups
  • Mail: Stalwart MTA replacing Exim
  • OS: AlmaLinux 9 https://almalinux.org

Migration took me about 72 hours with zero unplanned downtime. 340 active hosting accounts transferred with DNS pre-staging.

I am documenting the full runbook and will share it next quarter if anyone is interested.

GeorgeNmp

Member

AS64512

#2

Congratulations on the operational completion. To be precise, cPanel's pricing model shifted dramatically after their 2019 licensing restructuring, particularly for multi-account environments. The economics you describe align with what we observed in transit pricing curves—fixed costs become untenable at scale.

One correction: Stalwart is an excellent choice, though you may want to verify its RPKI validation path for outbound mail. Some deployments default to relaxed DNSSEC checking, which affects deliverability to providers with strict IRR-filtered prefixes. We documented this with a @Vultr mail gateway last year.

iBGP, eBGP, don't care, just peer
ME

Member

#3

Tried hestia once. The interface felt slower than expected. Maybe my vps was too small. Did you need to resize anything during migration. Or did it run lighter than cPanel in the end...

ana_mad

Member

#4
GeorgeNmp said:
We documented this with a @Vultr mail gateway last year.

We moved two clusters off cPanel last year, sent ticket to support three times during migration! But worth it in end, saved so much on licenses. Your stack looks solid, I will check Stalwart for our mail servers too. Cheers

swimming upstream since 2019 🐟
NO

Member

#5

Which AlmaLinux 9 kernel are you running, stock or custom?

AN

Member

#6

Same licensing pain here, moved off cPanel in 2022

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