Ansible + dashboard

Host smarter. Operate with clarity.

CarbonFish combines opinionated Debian/Ubuntu playbooks with a FastAPI control plane—sites, runtimes, SSL, firewall, databases, backups, and logs in one place.

Explore the dashboard Pricing

Why teams re-evaluate bundled panel licenses

Infrastructure as code

Provision nginx, PHP-FPM, Python, MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Node, ModSecurity, and more with Ansible—repeatable and reviewable.

Live operations

Manage services, UFW, PHP, Node, and Python versions, nginx, cron, backups, and file access without SSH memorization.

Built for operators

Health checks, job output, structured logs, and guardrails that match how small teams actually run servers.

What you can do

A single dashboard surface for day-two work—aligned with the routes shipped in the product.

Sites & users Create and modify hosting accounts and SSL.

PHP Account runtime: PHP-FPM version and extensions per hosting account, with pool tuning and nginx wiring from the panel.

Node.js Account runtime: Node.js version and process configuration for each hosting account’s apps behind nginx.

Python Account runtime: interpreter version, virtualenvs, and app services scoped per hosting account.

Nginx Server blocks and runtime wiring from the UI.

MariaDB Account databases on MariaDB—users, access, and engine tuning (memory, cache, connections) from database settings.

MySQL Account databases on MySQL where you deploy it—credentials, access, and MySQL-oriented tuning from the panel.

PostgreSQL Account databases on PostgreSQL—roles, connectivity, and key server parameters from database settings.

Security UFW overview, ModSecurity hooks, service controls.

Backups Schedules, targets, and job visibility.

Files & logs Scoped file manager and log tail workflows.

Cloud Optional Cloudflare and related credential flows.

CarbonFish Pricing

CarbonFish is billed as a simple monthly subscription on your server—two tiers, no per-account metering from us.

Monthly plans

Solo

Solo Entrepreneurs

$5/mo

One hosting account on this server—freelancers, consultants, and small sites.

Unlimited

Agencies & hosts

Unlimited accounts

$10/mo

No account cap on this server—agencies and hosts who stack many sites on one box.

Purchase a License (monthly subscription via Stripe).

When the panel invoice rivals the machine

Against that backdrop, commercial control panel licenses—especially cPanel’s per-account and per-server store pricing—have often climbed to where they meet or exceed what you pay for the VPS or dedicated server itself, sometimes before bandwidth or backups. That shifts budget from infrastructure to software rent, especially on smaller instances where the license is a large fraction of total hosting spend.

License vs hardware: On typical SMB and agency workloads, the control panel line item can be half or more of the monthly bill—no longer a rounding error next to CPU and RAM.
Predictable ops, unpredictable license tiers: Account limits and SKU changes can move costs faster than server pricing.
cPanel unfavorable economics: List prices for Solo through Premier run far above CarbonFish’s $5 or $10/mo, and history has included repeated increases after teams standardized on the stack—see the bars and ownership notes below.

CarbonFish vs commercial panels (USD/mo, list)

Single scale (0–$72/mo). CarbonFish Solo & Unlimited; Plesk VPS representative list (plesk.com/pricing); cPanel Cloud/VPS store (cpanel.net/pricing). Confirm live prices before purchase.

After purchase: who pays for the repricing?

The major commercial panels did not stop changing price after you adopted them. Following acquisitions and consolidation—including ownership under private-equity–backed operators—cPanel in particular became known for steep, repeated license increases that landed long after teams had built processes and customer pricing around the old numbers. That pattern is corrosive for hosting (margin disappears into license rows), for engineers (ops budget goes to rentware instead of reliability and tooling), and for businesses (higher bills without new capability on the box).

Bad for hosting

Resellers and managed hosts often had to pass through hikes or eat them—either way, the product economics get worse.

Bad for engineers

You standardise on a stack, then the license line item swells; there is less left for observability, redundancy, and experimentation.

Bad for businesses

The server stayed the same size; the control plane got more expensive. That is a tax on every site you host.

Third-party trademarks and pricing belong to their owners. cPanel figures above match the public cPanel Store listing; Plesk figures are representative USD VPS list points—your region, partner, or promo may differ. Always confirm live prices and contract terms before purchase.