cPanel

Plesk Vs cPanel: Which Control Panel is Right for You?

Introduction

cPanel and Plesk are counted among the excellent and well-known web hosting control panels. They provide the end-users the capability to enhance and manage their hosting experience smoothly. For instance, setting up emails, maintaining backups, creating FTP accounts, etc. Each of these control panels offers its own benefits and drawbacks.  

Talking about shared, reseller, VPS, or dedicated server hosting, these businesses are at boom these days. This is due to more and more businesses shifting to the web and so, their owners require a control panel in order to manage and operate the web hosting plans. Thus, as a web business owner, you can highly consider the two leading control panel options – cPanel and Plesk. In this article, you will comprehend the comparison Plesk vs cPanel that will further help you to make an informative decision while picking the web hosting control panel.

Web hosting Control Panels

Web hosting control panels

Before anything else, let us first provide you the general insights into what web hosting control panels can offer. Basically, they tend to offer an extensive range of practical resources in order to assist users in placidly administering their website hosting. The administration we are talking about involves the following things –

  • Handling and managing websites, domain names, and subscriptions
  • Executing and transferring files through FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
  • Controlling and maintaining databases such as MySQL
  • Installing add-ons, for instance, WordPress
  • Managing and controlling emails
  • Keeping and managing data backups, etc.

What is cPanel?

What is cpanel?

The control panel named ‘cPanel’ was launched in 1992. cPanel hosting has a high reputation for rendering solid quality and reliability. You can install it quickly. Also, you can understand its functioning easily. It is built on Linux. It s highly profitable to use separate cPanel servers when it comes to hosting multiple websites. 

Further, the WHM (Web Hosting Manage) works as an add-on model that makes it easier for you to handle multiple accounts. Thus, the cPanel and WHM (Web Hosting Manager) serve as a platform devised to enable an ultimate hosting experience. Moreover, you acquire robust industry-leading support available to you 24/7 as well. Web hosting with cPanel involves potent tools for both system administrators as well as control panel users. 

What is Plesk?

What is plesk?

Plesk has been considered a leader when it comes to the control panel industry. It has been existing for more than ten years now in the market. As stated earlier, Hosting with Plesk is another leading option for users having web hosting necessities. Plesk has made it simpler for directors and administrators to render web hosting to their clients. It is highly reliable and user-friendly as it provides an easy-to-use interface and a broad array of tools. It provides all those functionalities offered by cPanel. However, they come with some significant differences that are not available with cPanel server support. 

With Plesk hosting, you can smoothly handle multiple websites without requiring an additional plugin. The Plesk control panel has the ability to run with both Linux and Windows operating systems. Also, it can be fully customized. So, you can group the features in the way you desire. This helps you in increasing the efficiency and control over your control panel. 

cPanel gives direct competition to Plesk in terms of pricing and features. This is because both the pricing model and features set, which come with the cPanel and Plesk are quite similar. Therefore, it becomes challenging to make a comparison between both webs hosting control panels. However, for your better insights, we have highlighted the key points and compared cPanel v/s Plesk in the next section. 

Comparison between both the Control Panels

comparission between cpanel & plesk

User-Interface

If you are less familiar with web hosting control panels or have not worked with any before, the Plesk control panel can be the ideal choice for you. This is a fact that though the control panel of cPanel is as advanced and reliable as Plesk’s, however, one can acquire a more streamlined interface with Plesk. Therefore, a novice can tend to appreciate the Plesk control panel a bit more. Also, with the Plesk hosting plan, you are able to assemble similar kinds of features together. This assists you in building your own custom groupings. Thus, you will become capable of saving a lot of extra time and energy that is usually spent on searching for specific options.

Features and tools

Both the cPanel and Plesk come up with similar basic features and tools for the users. For instance, DNS configuration, database email, FTP, and management. However, the difference can be observed in the apps and extensions running. With the cPanel server, the users can add apps and extensions to the control panel. Whereas, with the Plesk server, the users get more direct apps and extensions offered by the control panel. For instance, Plesk provides support for Docker, Git compatibility, and 200,000+ images that can be launched directly and easily. Although you can also operate Docker and Git on cPanel. But you will have to deal with more complex workarounds.

Security

You will have high-level security with both cPanel and Plesk control panels. With cPanel web hosting, you will acquire SSL certificate installation, brute force security, and password-secured directories. On the other side, with Plesk web hosting, you will obtain SSL certificate installation, fail2ban intrusion prevention, active directory integration, and email spam filters. Moreover, the further security features you can have with the Plesk control panel are custom firewall protection, individual user accounts, and also ImunifyAV which is a rational antivirus and monitoring tool.

Backups

Hosting with cPanel enables you to manage your data backups on your own. However, you do not obtain an interface to restore system backup files with the cPanel. Further, hosting with Plesk enables you to schedule your own daily/weekly/yearly data backups. Also, the Plesk control panel permits you to backup domain configuration, data, and email, while offering a simple and easy restore option. 

WordPress

If you are amongst the ones who depend on WordPress for your website, the Plesk control panel is a great choice for you. Plesk web hosting provides an excellent feature that is available with cPanel – WordPress Toolkit. The WordPress Toolkit is the extension that permits WordPress users to operate their security administration with just one click. The  Plesk control panel takes the charge of handling plugin updates, security patches, and, bug fixes for you. Further, while involving a few more steps, you can also run WordPress with cPanel. 

Which is better, cPanel or Plesk?

Which one is better cPanel or Plesk?

We can conclude that both the advanced control panels i.e. cPanel and Plesk are great options to pick with the web hosting service. Either of the control panels has gained recognition by establishing themselves as reliable, affordable, secure, and robust solutions. But somewhere with the cPanel server, it is easy to discover the support staff as well as developers that are accustomed to the cPanel functionality. However, at some point, web hosting with cPanel beats hosting with cPanel when it comes to OS compatibility. This is because the Plesk control panel has the ability to operate with a broad variety of Linux operating systems, whereas cPanel can only run on CentOS. For numerous users, opting for a certain control panel depends on three major factors –

  • which operating system do they need to run
  • the expertise level they possess
  • and, the time they have for website administration.

If you need any further help in choosing the control panel that is right for your web business, you can reach out to the Hostbillo customer support service. We are not only available 24/7 to resolve your queries but also offer the leading control panel solutions with expert technical assistance. 

Arpit Saini

He is the Chief Technology Officer at Hostbillo Hosting Solution and also follows a passion to break complex tech topics into practical and easy-to-understand articles. He loves to write about Web Hosting, Software, Virtualization, Cloud Computing, and much more.

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