Nowadays, managing servers is much easier for website owners with the abundance of helpful features available. Today’s standard is to provide control panels that are fast and easy to understand so that users can focus more on other tasks like generating content, implementing marketing plans and driving more traffic.
It is easy to find a reliable web hosting provider that includes a beginner-friendly control panel in its hosting plans. Even if you opt for a service that doesn’t provide you with a control panel, you can always buy one separately and install it on the server.Web hosting control panels makes your lives easier by providing a single web-based interface where we can manage all your hosting activities. Here, you can see details of used and available bandwidth, database, visitor statistics, and more. The functions of hosting control panels are important, so it’s crucial to choose the best hosting panel for you.
When it comes to the control panel you should use for web hosting, the debate usually comes down to Plesk vs. cPanel. These two control panels have been the leading administrative web panels for years, and they gives you the best options when it comes to managing your websites. These two are both fast, reliable, and secure. So, it’s only natural that many IT users would want to know the real deal of cPanel vs Plesk especially those who are thinking about switching from Windows to Linux hosting.
♦ User Interface
Of the two web hosting control panels, Plesk is widely considered to have a cleaner graphical user interface (GUI) and is a bit easier to use. The Plesk interface is more streamlined and has features grouped in a list down the left-hand side. When clicked these expand to show further options.The cPanel interface, however, does not group the features and tools as helpfully, and is often seen as being more cluttered. cPanel does allow for customization of the home screen to make it a bit easier to find things as well.
♦ Security
Both web hosting control panels offers account level security measures like extensions to install firewalls, anti-spam filters, file upload scanners, and multi-factor authentication. So, in this aspect, the two panels are equal.
However, for most users, Plesk wins the cPanel vs Plesk security round. Plesk is known to respond to security threats within a day and releases a fix at an average of 9 days. cPanel, on the other hand, acknowledges vulnerabilities in about nine days and releases a fix in about 28 days.
♦ Performance
Generally, cPanel loads faster than Plesk. cPanel is the web hosting control panel that has really focused on optimising the performance. By focusing on reducing the amount of memory required, cPanel developers were able to speed up the page-load times within the panel, as well achieve faster times for account creation and other server management tasks.
♦ Features and tools
Plesk and cPanel both provide users with the same primary features for server and account management. Both can be used to configure DNS settings, manage email accounts, run FTP (File Transfer Protocol) and manage databases. Although it is possible to add extra apps to cPanel, Plesk comes with support for more useful apps and extensions straight from the box.
♦ Cost
If you are sure that you need cPanel for a long time period, you can ensure the lowest possible average price by going for their three-year subscription. But there are other discounts available as well. If you own numerous websites that need to run on separate cPanel instances, you can get a discount for that as well. Their volume discounts greatly benefit web hosting resellers as well.If you want to use Plesk, you can pick one of their three available editions. These includes; Web Admin for $10 per month, Web Pro for $15 and Web Host for $25 a month. This is just a starter price for each of the options, because after choosing one, you need to decide between three dedicated or VPS plans for each edition.
♦ Conclusion
We can say that control panels that allow you to deal with all your server and website administration tasks are based on the same core features. No matter if your server runs on Linux or Windows, a control panel should grant you full control over your server and website. As we reviewed cPanel and Plesk the differences are rather in the smaller details.
In case you don’t have any specific needs and just want a reliable control panel, either of them will do a great job. For those who don’t have any experience in cPanel or Plesk and want a Linux-free solution that is completely beginner-friendly, choosing Plesk is always a great idea. However, if you want to get the most features, specs and extras for your money, you can maximize the value by choosing cPanel.