GridPane Pricing Compared With the Best GridPane Alternative and Hosting Costs

GridPane is a WordPress server panel built for agencies, and its pricing changed shape. The three panel tiers most reviews still quote, roughly $30, $100 and $300 a month, are no longer open to new customers. GridPane's plan page now lists a free Core plan, PeakFreq managed servers billed by the hour, and bespoke managed hosting from $2,000 a year, plus a 360 support add-on from $100 a month. If you are budgeting for GridPane today, those are the numbers that apply.

Every figure below was read from GridPane's own plans, PeakFreq and 360 pricing pages in September 2026. Server prices are GridPane's monthly figures for PeakFreq, which runs on Vultr hardware. Competitor prices come from each vendor's own pricing page.

How much does GridPane cost?

GridPane's panel is free on the Core plan for up to 25 websites on your own Vultr server; you pay for the server, for PeakFreq managed servers from $18.08 a month, or for the 360 support add-on from $100 a month. Bespoke fully managed hosting starts at $2,000 a year. Here is what each option includes.

So the real GridPane price for most agencies is the server bill. The panel only turns into a large line item when you buy 360 support, which is priced per site.

Is GridPane free?

Yes, the Core plan is free for up to 25 websites, but it creates servers at Vultr only and leaves out several things agencies usually pay GridPane for. GridPane's own plan page lists support ticket access, active server monitoring, staging features and local and remote backups under PeakFreq, not under Core. On Core you get the tuned stack and full root access, and you handle backups, monitoring and support questions yourself. If you stay on Core, at least put an external uptime monitor on every client site, because nothing in the free plan will tell you a server went down at 2 a.m.

The Vultr restriction matters more than it first looks. An agency with client servers at DigitalOcean, Hetzner or in a client's own AWS account cannot bring those into a new Core account. That, more than price, is why most agencies searching for a GridPane alternative are searching.

What happened to the $30, $100 and $300 GridPane plans?

They were retired for new customers. GridPane's FAQ says the Panel and Developer Plus plans "are no longer available for sign up" and that features will move to add-ons you can pick and pay for. Review sites that still rank for GridPane pricing quote Pro at $30, Developer at $100 and Enterprise at $300 a month; you cannot buy those today. If a comparison you are reading quotes them as current, treat its other figures with the same caution.

How much do GridPane PeakFreq servers cost?

PeakFreq servers cost $18.08 a month for 1 vCPU and 2 GB, $36.02 for 2 vCPU and 4 GB, and $72.04 for 3 vCPU and 8 GB, billed hourly against credit you deposit in advance. Prices are per server, not per site.

There is a site cap to know about. When PeakFreq is used with the free Core plan, GridPane sets a hard limit of 5 production and 5 staging websites per 1 GB of RAM. A 4 GB server therefore holds 20 production sites, and you cannot squeeze in a twenty first by tuning caches. Remote backups also need your own Amazon S3 or Backblaze B2 account; the storage is not included.

GridPane pricing for an agency with 20 client sites

For 20 WordPress sites, GridPane PeakFreq on one 4 GB server is about $36 a month, which is cheaper than any panel plus a comparable server that we priced. Adding 360 support takes the same agency to $400 a month before servers. The table puts that next to the panels agencies most often compare, each on two 4 GB DigitalOcean Droplets at $24.

We added every row by hand: 15 sites at $20 is $300, plus the $100 base; two Droplets at $24 are $48. The honest reading is that GridPane is inexpensive for a WordPress only agency that is happy on Vultr and does not need a human on the other end of a ticket. It stops being inexpensive the moment you buy 360 support, and it stops being an option when your servers have to live somewhere other than Vultr.

What is the best GridPane alternative?

The best GridPane alternative depends on why you are leaving: SpinupWP or RunCloud for a cheaper WordPress panel on any cloud, Cloudways if you want the servers managed for you, and DeployManage if WordPress sits next to Laravel or Node apps and the team needs seats, an audit log and git releases.

• SpinupWP is the closest in spirit: WordPress first, bring your own server on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS and others. Essentials is $12 for one server with unlimited sites, and extra servers follow a graduated ladder, so 10 servers cost $59. Push to deploy pulls into the live site; there is no release rollback. Our SpinupWP alternative page has the full ladder.
• RunCloud is $9 for one server, $19 for up to 50 on Professional and $49 on Business, where atomic deploys and 10 seats live. It runs WordPress and plain PHP. See the RunCloud alternative comparison.
• Cloudways manages the servers and support for you, closer to what PeakFreq and GridPane's managed hosting sell. It costs more per gigabyte and add-ons are charged per application. Our Cloudways alternative page prices it out.
• xCloud is free for one server and 10 sites, then $3 to $5 per server, which makes it the budget pick; its docs do not describe atomic releases or rollback.

When DeployManage is the better fit than GridPane

DeployManage is more expensive than GridPane PeakFreq for a pure WordPress agency, and the table above says so. It earns its fee in three situations.

Your servers are not on Vultr. DeployManage provisions and manages servers on DigitalOcean, Hetzner, AWS, Vultr, Linode and any Ubuntu VPS you can reach over SSH, including servers in a client's own cloud account. Mixing providers is normal for agencies that inherit clients.

WordPress is only part of the book. Many agencies also run a Laravel client portal, a Node API or a headless front end. GridPane is built for WordPress; DeployManage runs WordPress, PHP, Laravel and Node.js sites on the same servers, with Supervisor workers and queue restarts handled per release. Our guide to hosting multiple websites on one server covers how that isolation works.

The team has grown. Growth includes 10 seats and Business is unlimited, and every deploy, rollback and SSH key change is logged against a person. Custom themes and plugins deploy from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket as atomic releases on Growth and Business, so a bad push rolls back in one click instead of a restore from backup.

If that describes your agency, start with the WordPress VPS control panel for agencies. It shows how client sites are provisioned, isolated and handed over, with the same one-time demo to try it on a real server.

How to move sites off GridPane without downtime

Build the new server first and leave GridPane untouched. Copy each site's files and database to the new server, test it through a hosts file entry or a temporary domain, then lower the DNS TTL to 300 seconds a day before the switch. At cutover, put WooCommerce or membership sites into maintenance mode, take a final database sync, and change the A record. Keep the GridPane server running for a week so any visitor still on a cached DNS answer sees a working site, then cancel. Sites with no orders or logins can skip the maintenance window entirely.