Softaculous Premium licensing comes down to one choice: which server class your box is. We sell two SKUs — Softaculous VPS and Softaculous Dedicated — and the only difference between them is price, set by the hardware class the license is issued for.
This article covers what both licenses include, how the VPS and dedicated pricing compares, and what the license binds to on your server.
The two SKUs
| Softaculous VPS | Softaculous Dedicated | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $1.50/month | $2.50/month |
| Server class | VPS | Dedicated |
| Script library | 450+ scripts | 450+ scripts |
| Auto-upgrade scripts | Yes | Yes |
| Panel integration | cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin | cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin |
| Free migration | Included | Included |
Both licenses give you the same feature set — the 450+ script library covering WordPress, Joomla, Magento, and the rest of the Softaculous catalog, auto-upgrade support for installed apps, and integration with cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin. Free migration is included with either SKU. The only variable is which server class the license is issued for.
VPS vs dedicated pricing
Softaculous prices per server, split by server class: $1.50/month for a VPS license, $2.50/month for a dedicated license. That is about 1.67× the VPS price for bare metal — not double, and not a flat $1 difference alone drives most fleet decisions here; it is close enough that the choice mostly comes down to matching the SKU to the actual hardware class rather than trying to save a fraction of a dollar with the wrong one.
Buy the SKU that matches the hardware you're actually running. If you migrate a workload from a VPS to bare metal (or the reverse), you'll need the matching license for the new server class — see moving a Softaculous license to a new IP without downtime if you're just changing IPs on the same server class, which is a simpler change.
What the license binds to
The license is tied to a single server. A single license covers unlimited accounts and unlimited installs on the server it's activated on — there's no per-account or per-install upcharge. It works across cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin, so you don't need a different SKU per panel.
Worked example: 3-node shared fleet
A host runs two cPanel VPS nodes and one dedicated cPanel box.
- 2 × Softaculous VPS at $1.50/month = $3.00/month
- 1 × Softaculous Dedicated at $2.50/month = $2.50/month
- Fleet total: $5.50/month
One license per server, regardless of how many accounts run on it, keeps this simple to budget and simple to scale as the fleet grows.
A note on Softaculous's free edition
Softaculous also publishes a free/community edition directly from the vendor. It's a smaller product than Premium — a reduced script library without WordPress support — and it's not something we sell; we only offer the Premium VPS and Dedicated licenses above. Most hosts running customer-facing accounts choose Premium because WordPress and the full script catalog are what their signup flow depends on. If you're evaluating the free edition, check Softaculous's own site for current details, since specifics there are outside what we can confirm.
How much does a Softaculous license cost per month?+
Why is Softaculous more expensive on a dedicated server than a VPS?+
Does a Softaculous license work on both cPanel and Plesk?+
How many servers does one Softaculous license cover?+
What's included in the Softaculous license?+
Next steps
- Ready to activate? Buy a Softaculous license for the right server class, or check the full pricing table for annual rates and volume tiers.
- Fresh server? Follow installing Softaculous on cPanel and hardening the defaults — the four settings worth changing before a customer touches the installer.
- License banner already showing? Fix it with Softaculous license file not found, and for fleet-wide pricing on more than five nodes, talk to us.