We sell four cPanel license SKUs — Admin Cloud, Pro Cloud, Premier Cloud, and Premier Metal — across three named tiers, each capped at a different number of cPanel accounts. Picking the wrong one costs money in two directions: under-buy and you hit the cap with new-account creation blocked, over-buy and you pay for headroom you'll never use.
This article covers what each tier actually limits, and where Cloud vs. Metal comes into play in our lineup.
The tiers and SKUs
| SKU | Account cap | Price | Infrastructure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Admin Cloud | 5 | $35.00/mo | Cloud / virtualized (WHM + cPanel + Webmail) |
| Pro Cloud | 30 | $53.00/mo | Cloud / virtualized |
| Premier Cloud | 100 | $69.00/mo | Cloud / virtualized |
| Premier Metal | 100 | $69.00/mo | Bare-metal / dedicated servers |
A few specifics worth pinning down before you choose:
- Admin Cloud caps at 5 accounts. It's suited to internal projects, small staging fleets, or single-client setups rather than a reseller business.
- Pro Cloud at 30 accounts is a good fit for agencies and small hosts.
- Premier Cloud / Premier Metal cap at 100 accounts. Premier is the only tier in our catalog available as both a Cloud and a Metal SKU — pick Premier Cloud for virtualized or cloud-provider infrastructure, or Premier Metal if you're licensing a bare-metal dedicated server. Both cost the same and cap at the same 100 accounts; the only difference is which infrastructure the license is issued for.
We don't currently offer a Metal variant of Admin or Pro — those two tiers are Cloud-only in our catalog.
Cloud vs Metal
- Cloud licenses are for virtualized and cloud-provider environments (KVM and similar virtualization, cloud hosts, etc.).
- Metal licenses are for bare-metal dedicated servers.
In our lineup, that choice only exists at the Premier tier — Admin and Pro are sold as Cloud licenses only.
How account counting works
A "cPanel account" is one user with a username and home directory under /home/, not a
domain. A cPanel license is required per server. Suspending an account doesn't
necessarily free up a license slot right away, so don't assume a suspension alone gets
you back under the cap — plan around actual account counts rather than suspension status.
If you're not sure how many accounts you're currently using, check WHM directly before choosing a tier; that's the number that matters for licensing headroom, not domain counts (addon domains, subdomains, and parked domains under an account don't add extra accounts).
What happens if you outgrow 100 accounts
If your fleet grows past the 100-account cap on Premier, contact sales to talk through options for larger deployments — we don't have a self-serve overage tier published here, so it's best handled as a conversation rather than guessing at numbers.
Worked example: account growth across tiers
A host starts with 4 accounts on Admin Cloud (cap 5) and grows steadily.
| Stage | Account count | Tier needed | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Start | 4 | Admin Cloud | Comfortable headroom. |
| Growth | 6 | Pro Cloud | Hit the Admin cap at account 6 — upgrade. |
| Growth | 32 | Premier Cloud (or Metal) | Hit the Pro cap at account 31 — upgrade. |
When to switch tiers
Upgrade when you're approaching the cap on your current SKU (Admin Cloud near 5, Pro Cloud near 30, Premier near 100) and growth looks likely to continue. If a bulk migration is scheduled, get headroom in place before cutover — hitting the cap mid-migration can leave accounts half-created.
For current per-tier monthly rates, see our cPanel pricing page. For volume buyers or larger fleets, contact sales for options.
Does cPanel Admin Cloud support resellers?+
What happens when I hit my cPanel account cap?+
What's the difference between Premier Cloud and Premier Metal?+
Can Admin Cloud or Pro Cloud be licensed on a bare-metal server?+
Are suspended cPanel accounts counted against my license?+
What happens if I need more than 100 accounts?+
Next steps
- Pick a tier and activate a cPanel license, or compare it to the alternatives in cPanel vs Plesk in 2026.
- If you've already bought one and it isn't activating, work through the cPanel license invalid checklist.
- Planning a tier upgrade mid-billing-cycle? Read how prorated license billing actually works before you press the button.