InterWorx license tiers explained: VPS vs Dedicated pricing

Every other control panel on this site prices its main SKU by account count — cPanel packages, Plesk's Web Admin/Pro/Host split, CloudLinux's per-account CageFS limits. InterWorx doesn't. It prices by vCPU count and clustering capability, with domain limits as a secondary axis that only bites on the cheapest SKU. Buyers coming from cPanel or Plesk routinely size an InterWorx license the wrong way because they're hunting for an account-count number that mostly doesn't exist here.

This article covers the three real InterWorx SKUs, what each one actually restricts, why the VPS tier exists at all, and the reseller-tier pricing ladder that makes InterWorx one of the cheaper full-featured panels per server once you're buying more than a handful.

The three SKUs

Two things jump out if you're used to cPanel or Plesk pricing:

• The cheapest SKU has no domain cap. The VPS license is gated by vCPU count, not by how many SiteWorx accounts you run on it. A 4-vCPU VPS with 40 low-traffic SiteWorx accounts is perfectly licensed on the $7.50 tier — cPanel's equivalent-priced tier would have capped you at a handful of accounts.
• Clustering, not account count, is the mid-tier gate. Dedicated Limited exists mainly for operators who want NodeWorx clustering (separate mail, database, or DNS nodes) but don't need more than 35 SiteWorx accounts on the primary node. If you don't need clustering, the VPS license is very often the correct SKU even on a dedicated box, provided you're under 4 vCPUs.

Why the VPS tier exists

InterWorx added the VPS license type specifically to undercut the entry price for buyers who don't need multi-server clustering — developers staging a site before a production move, or small operators running a single low-traffic box. The tradeoff is enforced at the vCPU level: InterWorx will throw licensing errors on a VPS-licensed instance if it detects 5 or more vCPU threads. This isn't a soft warning — the panel stops trusting its own license file and locks functionality until you either drop to 4 vCPUs or upgrade to a Dedicated SKU.

Domains vs vhosts — the soft cap that isn't a hard cap

Both the VPS and Dedicated Unlimited SKUs are marketed as "unlimited domains," but InterWorx's own documentation recommends staying under roughly 500 vhosts per node regardless of license type. This isn't a licensing enforcement point — it's a performance recommendation, and InterWorx will not lock you out at vhost 501. In practice, most shared-hosting operators hit resource ceilings (RAM, LVE limits if running CloudLinux alongside, or I/O contention) well before 500 vhosts becomes the binding constraint.

Dedicated Limited is the one SKU where the 35-domain figure is a real, enforced ceiling — SiteWorx account 36 will fail to provision, not just perform badly. If you're near that number and expect to keep growing, jump straight to Dedicated Unlimited rather than treating 35 as a soft warning; there's no intermediate step between Limited and Unlimited.

Clustering: what it buys you and which SKUs get it

Both Dedicated SKUs include the ability to run NodeWorx clustering — splitting a single InterWorx deployment across dedicated mail, MySQL, and DNS nodes rather than running everything on one box. The VPS license explicitly disables clustering regardless of how many domains or SiteWorx accounts you run on it.

This matters for capacity planning, not just cost: a growing shared-hosting operator on a VPS license who later needs a dedicated mail node has to upgrade the license before building the cluster, not after. See InterWorx clustering setup for what a split deployment actually looks like once you're past the VPS tier.

Reseller and volume pricing

InterWorx's retail prices above are the walk-up rate. Certified resellers sell the same license keys at tiered volume pricing, typically structured as RP T1 through RP T4 (and an uncapped TX tier for the largest buyers):

The gap between retail and RP T4 is large — roughly 40% off the Unlimited SKU and close to half off the VPS SKU. This is a bigger volume discount than cPanel or Plesk typically offer at equivalent server counts, largely because InterWorx has fewer resellers competing on price and uses reseller tiering as its main go-to-market channel rather than direct enterprise sales.

Worked example: picking a SKU

A hosting operator is standing up a new node for 25 client SiteWorx accounts, averaging low traffic, no need for a separate mail node yet, on a provider that allocates 4 vCPUs at the tier they're paying for.

• 25 accounts, no clustering need, 4 vCPUs → VPS license is correct and cheapest. Domain count doesn't matter here since it's unlimited on this SKU.
• Six months later the operator adds a dedicated MySQL node to reduce contention on the primary box → this requires clustering, which the VPS license doesn't support. Upgrade to Dedicated Unlimited (not Limited — 25 accounts already leaves little headroom under the 35-domain cap once addon domains are counted).
• If the operator instead just needs more vCPUs on the same single-node deployment (say the provider resizes them to 8 vCPUs for a traffic spike), that alone forces a move off the VPS SKU even with zero clustering need — the vCPU limit is checked independently of clustering.

Next steps

• Compare the actual panel experience, not just pricing, in InterWorx vs cPanel.
• Migrating an existing cPanel fleet onto InterWorx? Start with migrating cPanel to InterWorx and the cPanel backup format InterWorx reads.
• Ready to buy or move a key? Activate an InterWorx license or see how prorated license billing works for mid-cycle SKU changes.