Opening a reseller hosting business in 2026: costs of Koapanel, WHMCS and reseller accounts

Anyone looking to start a reseller hosting business in 2026 has three options, each with very different fixed costs before selling a single package. We've verified these against official price lists on 3 November 2026.

Route 1: your own control panel on VPS (Koapanel)

On the Koapanel official website (koapanel.app/prezzi, checked today), the Free tier covers up to 3 sites, with all features and updates included: no charge. Those wanting to resell more than 3 sites must move to a paid licence, but the official pricing page doesn't publish a figure for that level: we're not publishing one either, because it's not verifiable at the moment.

What the product documentation does confirm are features designed for resellers: three access levels (administrator, reseller, end user), each with their own packages and branding, and an SMTP relay purpose-built for cloud providers that block outbound port 25—a problem anyone who's ever spun up a VPS on a major cloud platform knows well.

Route 2: WHMCS plus a separate provisioning panel

The official price list (whmcs.com/pricing, checked 3 November 2026) shows three main tiers for the self-hosted version: Plus at $34.95/month for up to 250 active clients, Professional at $54.95/month for up to 500, Business from $84.95/month for up to 1,000 clients (including live chat and priority support access). There's also a cloud Starter tier at $9.99/month for up to 25 active clients, at $0.40 per additional client.

One point worth noting that the price list doesn't highlight: WHMCS is a billing and client management system, not a hosting control panel. To actually create client accounts you need a separate provisioning panel (cPanel/WHM, Plesk or equivalent), whose cost is added to your WHMCS licence fee.

Route 3: turnkey reseller accounts

Serverplan (serverplan.com/hosting-reseller, checked 3 November 2026) offers three Linux Reseller plans with control panel included:

Plan	Monthly price	Space	Included panel
Reseller Linux Basic	€27 + VAT	50 GB SSD NVMe	WHM-cPanel
Reseller Linux Plus	€43 + VAT	100 GB SSD NVMe	WHM-cPanel
Reseller Linux Pro	€58 + VAT	150 GB SSD NVMe	WHM-cPanel

On all three plans, bandwidth is advertised as unlimited, with unlimited sites, email accounts and databases.

Working out the margin with real numbers

Taking Serverplan's Basic plan (€27 + VAT = €32.94/month with VAT at 22%) and reselling packages at €6/month, break-even is around 6 clients. Beyond that threshold, every additional client within the available 50 GB is pure margin, until space or bandwidth forces you to upgrade. This is our own calculation, not a figure stated by the provider: verify it with your own client mix.

Koapanel is a Prime Software product.