OpenPanel vs cPanel
OpenPanel is a European alternative to cPanel: same cloud & hosting use case, headquartered in Sweden and governed by EU GDPR, while cPanel (WebPros) is based in the United States.
By the EU Alternatives team Last updated
Gain powerful web and product analytics with an open-source platform. Understand user behavior, track events, and own your data. GDPR compliant and cookie-less.
- Jurisdiction
- EU / EEA
- Primary privacy law
- EU GDPR
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- No
- Open source
- Yes
- Free tier
- No
Two decades of muscle memory keep shared-hosting admins on it: WHM, one-click installers and endless documentation. Licenses start at 29.99 dollars a month for a single account and climb by account count, after years of steep price rises. The panel belongs to WebPros, majority-owned since 2019 by the private equity firm CVC, and remains an American company under that structure.
- Jurisdiction
- United States
- GDPR by default
- Requires DPA + TIA
- US CLOUD Act exposure
- Yes
OpenPanel vs cPanel at a glance
| OpenPanel | cPanel | |
|---|---|---|
| Headquarters | Sweden | United States |
| Data jurisdiction | EU / EEA | United States |
| Primary privacy law | EU GDPR | Requires DPA + transfer assessment |
| US CLOUD Act exposure | No | Yes |
| Best for | Teams that need cloud & hosting built for European data-protection requirements | Teams already invested in the WebPros ecosystem |
Choose OpenPanel if…
- You want a provider governed by a European privacy regime
- GDPR or public-sector data-protection requirements apply to you
- Open-source code and self-hosting matter to you
- You'd rather back the European tech ecosystem
Stick with cPanel if…
- You depend on integrations only available in the WebPros ecosystem
- Your organisation has no EU data-residency constraints
- Migration costs outweigh the jurisdiction benefits for now
Why choose OpenPanel over cPanel?
The decisive argument is data jurisdiction. cPanel is headquartered in the United States, which means personal data processed through it can be subject to non-EU legal regimes: the US CLOUD Act, FISA 702, or similar laws depending on the provider. After the 2020 Schrems II ruling, EU organisations must carry out a transfer impact assessment for every such data flow.
OpenPanel removes that overhead. As a Sweden-based provider, it operates under EU GDPR, and data stays inside the EU/EEA by default. For regulated sectors such as health, public administration, and finance, that's not a nice-to-have but a requirement. For everyone else, it's concentration-risk insurance: you avoid depending on a single jurisdiction that can change the rules without warning.