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cPanel still worth it for small hosting providers in 2025?
LiquidSpikes
Member
Hello LET community!,
We are currently working on launching a shared hosting offering under our company, Nobull Networks, and are doing some due diligence on the control panel side.
cPanel is obviously the industry standard, but with the per-account pricing model and frequent price increases, it’s becoming harder to justify. Especially as a smaller, independent provider that’s trying to stay competitive without overselling or cutting corners.
We are debating between sticking with cPanel for the familiarity and ecosystem vs. exploring alternatives like DirectAdmin, CyberPanel, or even an open-source stack for tech-savvy users.
For those of you running shared hosting setups (especially as a smaller provider):
- Is cPanel still worth it for customer expectations and support simplicity?
- Have any of you successfully moved away from cPanel and kept customers happy?
- Are clients actually asking for it these days, or are other panels finally gaining traction?
Appreciate any insights.
We are trying to stay true to the "no BS" ethos, but we also don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot by being too niche.
Thanks in advance.
LiquidSpikes, Co-founder of Nobull Networks.
Comments
I'll let others opine on shared panels, but since I'm doing time up in this corner of the republic, naturally I had to take a look.
Your web site seems free from things that annoy me like stolen TOS, fake testimonials, fake status pages, and AI-generated CEO photos. Not wild about the template but I see a lot of templates, and at least you filled all of it out - even the social media links. Plus you discuss liquefaction, which I found entertaining. So kudos for all that.
But $6.99 for a 768MB VPS...
Thanks for the feedback, we are actually working with a designer right now to give the site a full overhaul.
As for the pricing, before writing us off you might want to check our benchmarks.
We don’t oversubscribe, throttle, or play the usual games we call BS.
You actually get the performance you are paying for, just ran a fresh YABS from our $6.99 plan if you want to see it in action:
https://www.vpsbenchmarks.com/yabs/nobull_networks-1c-1gb-20250419-f8b4bc
This industry is all bottom dollar, we wrote about this exact issue not too long ago:
https://www.nobullnetworks.com/blog/the-bottom-dollar-vps-trap-pay-less-now-pay-twice-later/
And on top of that, we run stock control to make sure what we sell is what we can deliver no cramming nodes to maximize margins:
https://www.nobullnetworks.com/blog/why-we-use-stock-control-to-deliver-uncompromised-vps-performance/
I really appreciate the look either way.
Hopefully a few others chime in on the shared panel debate!
Based on my own experience the common public still prefers cPanel. Our cPanel plans costs a good bit more than the DirectAdmin plans yet from traffic outside LET most clients signup for cPanel. DirectAdmin is still sort of unknown outside niche communities, at least it's not a familiar panel yet for many.
I also enjoy working with cPanel much more. I run into much fewer issues, which in itself is worth a lot.
I am considering taking a look at webuzo panel from softaculous (as we like the idea of softaculous either way), rather not having to pay the blood money to cPanel if possible, but if that is the best decision for our customers I will get over it.
TBH it's 2025 and I can't imagine new web hosting business still being profitable. VPS, dedicated servers, serverless hostings, etc., are so cheap, not to mention the tons of Paas providers such as wix/shopify.
In terms of web hosting panels, cPanel is still the boss. People choose shared web hosting over VPS only because they want something quick and easy to set up. DA fails hard in this regard, as apparently I need to spend more time to get a Wordpress site up and running in DA than on a VPS.
Cannot comment on other panels as I haven't used them before.
I think cpanel sucks and I don’t use hosts that have it.
Cyberpanel is anything but secure IMHO. Just not what I am willing to use.
Directadmin I am stuck. Nothing bad to say. So I use it.
I don't like cPanel; I prefer to use DirectAdmin. I feel cPanel is overrated.
Especially backup and restore in cPanel sucks!
Personally, I think there are many panels that offer the same things as cPanel, and they're even part of the same group (webpros)
We prefer Plesk 100%
Directadmin lacks many things to consider.
We prefer DirectAdmin. Lower resource usage and fewer failures.
In the near future, I believe everyone will be creating their own control panels using AI. I tested this on ChatGPT, and it generated a quite impressive control panel using Python. However, it only created features for adding users and domains with MySQL functions. But if anyone needs a full-featured panel in the near future, it will likely be possible to generate it just with a prompt.
This is the prompt I gave
Create a hosting control panel with a facility to add , remove users and domains along with maria db database include a front end with python backend
See how simple it was. Ha ha ha
It is pretty impressive what you can do with AI now for sure. I just still feel more comfortable using something more supported and standardized in the industry.
I prefer DirectAdmin
As a user, I feel that there is not much difference between DirectAdmin and cpanel. Can someone tell me what are the advantages of cpanel compared to DirectAdmin?
Hello,
I believe cPanel still has a lot of traction even for small hosting companies, I provide 3 options for shared hosting plans - cPanel, DirectAdmin & Enhance. Out of the 3 cPanel has beaten DirectAdmin by a 25% Margin and Enhance is nowhere near both of them.
So if I were you and was planning to offer shared hosting options on LET or other forums, I would say cover both DA & cPanel due to how there's people who prefer both.
Do let me know if you have any questions.
For day-to-day use, DirectAdmin and cPanel feel pretty similar. cPanel does have a smoother interface, more plugin options, and works especially well with WHM if you're managing multiple accounts. It’s been around longer too, so a lot of people naturally lean toward it.
DirectAdmin has made big strides, though, and it’s usually a cheaper option. We offer both, and from what we’ve seen, most folks still tend to go with cPanel because of familiarity and ease of use. But really, it comes down to what you’re comfortable with.
If your website running fine and stable, you don't need login to the panel.
Well, maybe for changing email password.
Other than that, no need.
So +1 for DirectAdmin
I like DirectAdmin.
but I choose cPanel if I want to use a webdav(web disk) without tedious steps.
Holy shit, liquification? Like human turns into water or jelly blob? That’s mental.
I think cPanel will continue to be used for a long time whether we like it or prefer another one, the reason is that non-technical or not very technical people prefer cPanel because it is used by many providers, so switching to another panel will make it difficult for them to find things.
It has happened to me that I migrate and they tell me that the panel is not the same and to leave them the same panel.
In the end it is the customer who rules with their tastes.
I've been running a small web hosting business for over ten years. For a long time, I focused mainly on local clients – but that has changed recently, and we have expanded significantly.
I mainly use DirectAdmin and FASTPANEL, and I'm very satisfied with both. I used cPanel in the beginning, but after the pricing skyrocketed, I decided to switch.
Let me be honest: You won’t get rich from a shared hosting offering. It’s already a success if you manage to cover your operating costs.
An interesting side note: I once had my students – who had no prior knowledge of web hosting or server administration – test some of the most well-known web control panels. Afterwards, I conducted a survey. I even published an article about it on Medium, but unfortunately, I had to remove the results due to legal reasons. If you're interested, you’re still welcome to read the redacted version of the article.
What I can say from that test is this: CloudPanel and FASTPANEL performed the best by far – especially in terms of usability and simplicity.
Most end users don’t care what name is written on the control panel. What really matters is that everything works smoothly and is easy to use – with a clean interface and no overly technical jargon that the average user can’t understand.
I wish you continued success and hope my insights were helpful!
All until it's necessary to migrate to another host. What's easier than finding another cPanel host to import a cPanel backup or doing a live migration (with databases and everything included)?
I would never advise people who require a control panel for hosting to go with a host that runs on CloudPanel or FASTPANEL no matter how nice they may be, as it may cost them dearly to migrate to another host.
In the case of cPanel to cPanel, your new host will handle the migration for you in a few minutes, and things will mostly work without much tweaking.
Many clients still prefer cPanel because it's easy and familiar. Some hosts switched to cheaper panels like DirectAdmin and kept customers happy with a little help. cPanel is still common, but other panels are slowly becoming accepted. If your clients aren’t tech-savvy, cPanel may still be the safer choice.
cPanel is still the industry standard, if you're targetting mid-age/old clients(30-60yrs old).
DA and every other panel serve almost the same stuff, but the UI is the catch.
cPanel can be used by a toddler, whereas DA and other stuff a bit pokey.
Personal opinion,
cP died since the launch of their 100.x
Jupiter theme looks dogshit in my opinion. Paperlantern was all my love.
Ditched it since then.
Customers will continue to gravitate towards cPanel so long as the price remains within their acceptable level.
This is what cPanel is doing. Trying to find what that max price is. They just keep increasing the price every year and thus far it really hasn't made much of a dent in their market share.
At some point though, either cPanel is going to price themselves out of market share or shared hosting providers are going to realize they're losing profits and will increase their cPanel hosting prices to a point that DirectAdmin or some alternative will start to take over.
This is the same thing that is happening with the price of gasoline and eggs here in the states. The price of these items will never go back to what they were before, because even at the higher prices people were still buying them. If 10 people were buying the product at $2 per in yesteryear, but 8 people are buying at $4 per now, they'll keep the $4 per price.
As some others have noted and it's a point I've really been saying since the cPanel price increase - the control panel being used really isn't used that much. Accounts - generally speaking - only log into the control panel to create email accounts or reset email account passwords. Maybe they log in to install WordPress or some other CMS, but once it's installed there's little reason to go back into the control panel.
What's more important - at least to me - is the software or web stack the control panel uses. What web server, database, MDA, and MTA is the control panel using? cPanel and DirectAdmin basically share the same stack. Enhance uses Postfix as it's MTA, so that's a bit more difficult to bring Exim customizations over to.
This is really something that DirectAdmin (or who ever wants to battle with cPanel for the #2 market share) isn't doing a good job of. DirectAdmin (or whoever) should be driving home the point of "how much do you really use your web hosting control panel anyway? You can still do the same functions with our control panel and save a lot more money!"
It honestly depends on your target audience. If you're targeting seasoned hosting users, cPanel will still be the go-to choice and what user's will flock to. If you're targeting the average person creating a website, I've realized the control panel really doesn't matter as long as it has everything they need and is user friendly. From my experience, the average user rarely even accesses their control panel, but again, it depends on who your client base is. Most major companies like SiteGround that once offered cPanel changed to their own custom control panel after cPanel's first change of pricing structure and hasn't faced any decline whatsoever, I actually see many prefer their control panel because it's easier to use. We're pretty much glued to cPanel at this point, but if I were starting today, I would go with DirectAdmin. It's stable, actively developed and gets the job done, plus it's less cluttered than cPanel.
After seeing the feedback here, we adjusted our pricing to $4.99 for a 1core, 1GB.