NovaPanel
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cPanel alternative

A free, modern cPanel alternative

cPanel still works — but the per-account licensing keeps climbing and the UI hasn't aged well. NovaPanel is a self-hosted hosting control panel built for the people leaving cPanel: flat per-server pricing, a genuinely free tier, a modern stack, and a one-line install.

root@vps 
$ curl -fsSL https://license.novapanel.dev/install.sh | sudo bash

Fresh Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 / 26.04 or Debian 12 / 13 VPS — installs in ~10 minutes.

No per-account licensing

cPanel charges by account count — a busy server can run $49.50/mo just for the panel. NovaPanel is flat per-server: free on Community, £4.99/mo on Pro. Same box, a fraction of the cost.

Modern, not 1996

A single Go binary with Caddy auto-TLS, PostgreSQL + MariaDB, and a clean dual-panel UI (separate admin and customer logins). No Perl, no AutoSSL config dance.

One command to install

curl one line, ~10 minutes, on a fresh Ubuntu or Debian VPS. The binary is checked against a published SHA-256 before it runs; updates are one click in-panel.

Free tier that isn't crippleware

The Community tier auto-issues at install and never expires: real sites, databases, mail-less hosting, DNS, auto-TLS, file manager, backups. Pro adds WAF, virus scanner, offsite backups, email and white-label.

The honest version

cPanel has a 20-year ecosystem — plugins, integrations, marketplace presence — that NovaPanel doesn't match yet. If you're deeply wired into cPanel's API or WHMCS, that switching cost is real. Accounts themselves come across: upload a cPanel backup and the panel imports it, one account at a time — it does not yet pull them off the old server for you, so a fleet of hundreds is still a fleet of hundreds. For a single VPS under ~100 accounts, NovaPanel saves roughly £500/year per server and gets you a nicer UI. Read the full breakdown on the NovaPanel vs cPanel page.

cPanel alternative — FAQ

Is NovaPanel a free cPanel alternative?
Yes. The Community tier is free forever and includes the core hosting stack — sites, databases, DNS, auto-TLS, file manager, local backups, FTP, cron. Pro (£4.99/mo per server) unlocks WAF, virus scanning, offsite S3/Backblaze backups, email accounts, git deploy and white-label branding. There is no per-account fee at any tier.
Can I migrate my cPanel accounts to NovaPanel?
Yes. Take a full account backup in cPanel, upload it in NovaPanel, and it imports the account — sites, files, databases, mail including stored messages, DNS records, forwarders and cron jobs. It shows you what it found and runs a dry run before creating anything. It works one account at a time from a backup file, so it does not yet pull accounts off the old server for you; for a handful of sites that is a few minutes each. Mailbox passwords are regenerated, so those users update their mail clients once. Migration is a Pro feature.
Does NovaPanel support .htaccess?
Yes, if you need it. Sites are served by Caddy by default, which does not read .htaccess — most .htaccess files are just WordPress permalink rules, which work regardless. For a site that relies on custom rewrites or access rules, Pro and Developer let you run that individual site on Apache or OpenLiteSpeed, which read .htaccess exactly as your cPanel server did. Caddy stays in front for SSL, the firewall and logs, and the site can be switched back at any time.
What does NovaPanel run on?
Ubuntu 22.04 / 24.04 / 26.04 LTS or Debian 12 / 13 (plus apt-based derivatives). It installs PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Caddy, Postfix/Dovecot, PowerDNS and the rest of the stack for you.
Is it open source?
The installer is public and MIT-licensed so you can audit exactly what runs on your server. The panel binary itself is closed-source and distributed via a license-gated CDN — that's how a one-person project funds ongoing support and updates.

Try the free cPanel alternative

No card needed for Community. Upgrade in-panel any time.

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