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Shared Customers: Is CPanel A MUST?
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Shared Customers: Is CPanel A MUST?

When you're looking to purchase a shared hosting plan, is CPanel a must? Just curious. VestaCP is lookin' pretty spiffy.

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Comments

  • GM2015GM2015 Member
    edited August 2015

    My first website was hosted with Bluehost. I had to learn everything by myself, google and tech support were there to answer my questions.

    Looking back, things I needed done were easy, but weren't for me initially.

    So yes, a control panel is great.

    If you can provide cpanel's necessary functionality with vestacp, then cpanel isn't necessary.

    I liked cpanel for database creation, web file manager and wordpress installation. I don't think I used anything else really, other then enabling ssh access and then staring at putty to figure out wtf I could do as a noob.

    People need functionality and help at the start, not necessarily a brand, like cpanel.

    Bluehost used cpanel extensively to upsell to their clients. Luckily, I didn't buy anything else from them.

  • jhjh Member

    I'm not a shared hosting customer but if there's something genuinely better then I'd consider it. If it's to save money then it's pointless - say you pay $30/month for the licence and put 300 accounts on the server, that's $0.10/month. Ask your customers if they'd like interoperability, a familiar interface, a solid company behind it etc. for $0.10.

  • very different if you want cPanel just for a VPS. but for shared hosting, it's the market leader

    Thanked by 1doghouch
  • plesk is better and you can get that cheap & free in some cases

    Thanked by 1Licensecart
  • I ran VestaCP on shared hosting when I first started MHS, about two months later I switched to cPanel.

    VestaCP is fine for VPS customers but as far as shared hosting goes you'll run into problems like not having a 1-click installer since most customers never ran an installer script for wordpress for example.

    cPanel is worth the cost each month and you'll thank yourself as your customer base grows.

  • LordSpockLordSpock Member, Host Rep

    In my opinion, and all of my customers - cPanel is the way forward. My customers found Vesta too difficult, Plesk was confusing... cPanel was a learning curve for those who had little to no experience to PCs but much easier than the aforementioned Plesk and cPanel and I could write guides on it, plus tons of guides were already available. Some of the addons that cPanel offers is worth the license fee too.

  • Yeah, I know for starters, 1-click installers are a must, but, for some reason, I really enjoy administrating VestaCP a whole lot more than CPanel. VestaCP is the best open-source control panel in my opinion, and open-source is a must for me. Taking an entirely different approach soon. As far as not including a 1-click installer, I could always hire somebody to write how-to's for installing Wordpress, setting up a MySQL Database, FTP account, and much more.

  • LeeLee Veteran

    cPanel for 2 reasons.

    It achieves everything the non technical client wants to do in less than 3 steps on average. The majority of shared customers globally do not want to be server experts. They run Windows on their home PC and therefore that is their benchmark.

    As well as new clients to hosting you may want to attract customers from other hosts. In the main they will cPanel users who will only move to a Cpanel host. Learning a new panel is not in their nature.

    This is what many tend to overlook, hosting is simply a requirement for most shared clients that they need not want to have so it needs to work at their level.

    Using Vesta will only appeal to few who are willing to pay.

    Thanked by 2ricardo howardsl2
  • TheLinuxBugTheLinuxBug Member
    edited August 2015

    @TarZZ92 said:
    plesk is better and you can get that cheap & free in some cases

    No it is not 'better', it has good functionality and can be a powerful tool but in my opinion (and I use and manage several Plesk servers daily) it is not better, easier , or easier to maintain. The fact it supports a few niche items better, or that cPanel does not, such as tomcat and Coldfusion, etc is what maintains it in this market. cPanel in the past has supported tomcat but they are looking to discontinue that support and Coldfusion was never in the plan.

    Overall, cPanel is much more user friendly and easier to keep updated without breaking things. Plesk has its place but I would not call it 'better', especially for a newbie, when considering control panels and what can be needed to keep it updated. Also Plesk license cost skyrocket when you start adding functionality, such as their 'Power Pack', etc.

    Edit:

    I wanted to mention I am looking at this from a support technicians perspective and what it is like to upkeep a Plesk server. The user experience of Plesk and cPanel are about on par with one another with Plesk being a bit more confusing at times. Plesk compensates for the rough user experience by their many many KB articles that they post on almost any issue that comes up. While it is more cumbersome to upkeep there is a lot of support for it out there.

    My 2 cents.

    Cheers!

    Thanked by 1mpkossen
  • @TarZZ92 said:
    plesk is better and you can get that cheap & free in some cases

    I'm sorry but I can't stand plesk and seeing as most shared hosting customers are newbies, you would want to use cPanel since it's EXTREMELY user friendly compared to other panels.

  • Many shared customers will be new to hosting, so it doesn't matter if it's cpanel or something else, it will be new to them. I've seen custom panels that are better than cPanel as far as being newbie friendly.

  • Yes, for compatibility & comfort. Even a couple of my devs still stumble in VestaCP they much prefer cPanel.

  • agree, you'd likely lose sales not having cpanel, though to what degree im not sure.

  • Directadmin also good.

  • terrahostterrahost Member, Patron Provider

    @ZweiTiger said:
    Directadmin also good.

    Second that! We use DirectAdmin on all our webservers. And with the einDa-skin it looks really good :-)

  • raindog308raindog308 Administrator, Veteran

    cPanel is brain dead and stupidly engineered, but people love it because it was first and it's familiar.

    It's the Microsoft Windows of shared hosting.

  • @raindog308 said:
    cPanel is brain dead and stupidly engineered, but people love it because it was first and it's familiar.

    It's the Microsoft Windows of shared hosting.

    This might be the first time I've agreed with 100% of the words in one of your responses <3

    Does anyone have opinions on what to use if not cpanel for shared hosting? Interworx?

  • VestaCP isn't the best at security, I made @Jar migrate to cPanel :p

    Thanked by 2jar doghouch
  • I always thought that DirectAdmin is way slower than cPanel (and they are already slow) when it comes to the release of security patches. Is that wrong in the meantime?

  • jarjar Patron Provider, Top Host, Veteran

    @cassa said:
    VestaCP isn't the best at security, I made Jar migrate to cPanel :p

    It's not bad, from the best of my knowledge anyway. I've had to code in a few more checks and balances for the MX1 server, but for peace of mind it's no contest cPanel has the full time employed development team.

  • jhjh Member

    DA is a great choice! Just ask your customers to set their clocks back 5 years :)

    Thanked by 2Lee Licensecart
  • Directadmin also a good choice

  • @raindog308 said:
    cPanel is brain dead and stupidly engineered, but people love it because it was first and it's familiar.

    It's the Microsoft Windows of shared hosting.

    Plesk may not be as ergonomic as cPanel, but hell that flat theme beats cPanel for me any day.

  • @jhadley said:
    DA is a great choice! Just ask your customers to set their clocks back 5 years :)

    Hm? You mean the themes?

  • terrahostterrahost Member, Patron Provider

    @jhadley said:
    DA is a great choice! Just ask your customers to set their clocks back 5 years :)

    Check out the einDa theme. :)

  • How has the development progress been of Kloxo-MR?

  • @terrahost said:
    Check out the einDa theme. :)

    We developed our own theme. Do you want to see it , I PM you if you want :)

  • coolicecoolice Member
    edited August 2015

    Many of the panels miss very important feature as email hourly rates and email throttling and the developers are ignorant to the issue (there are thread for this in their forums or suggestion page Vesta and Interworx) and that make them not suitable for shared hosting cause, compromised client site can push 10 000+ emails for an hour and get you in trouble with rbl and upstream...

    Which make your other customers on same server got problems with their mail

    DA is the only other than cPanel that has it (enabled manual in configs when i last check)

    PS (centos webpanel got it but is not integrate with billing system and you can add such features to postfix ISPConfig)

  • @coolice said:
    Many of the panels miss very important feature as email hourly rates and email throttling and the developers are ignorant to the issue (there are thread for this in their forums or suggestion page Vesta and Interworx) and that make them not suitable for shared hosting cause, compromised client site can push 10 000+ emails for an hour and get you in trouble with rbl and upstream...

    Which make your other customers

    DA is the only other than cPanel that has it (enabled manual in configs when i last check)

    PS (centos webpanel got it but is not integrate with billing system and you can add such features to postfix ISPConfig)

    +1 , Agree. Got an InterWorx server with 300 account. One customer sent 300k email then the mail server crashed. The fix was take several hour... and there is no source of who did it because they use php-mail. This happened to Directadmin too but only sent 250 email as the limit then i got an email with the sourde of the problem file. I deleted it then the issue was fixed.

    Well i sent several email to InterWorx about this. That was 1 year ago. The reply was choose good customers not abusers.

    OK.

  • I have been a shared hosting customer for many years. Including a few free ones and some paid solutions Servage was the one I used for the longest term.

    Whilst buying, what was important for me was the package. Panel had no importance as long there was a panel I can create databases, import /export them and do some backups.

    They were using a custom cp and I was content with it. I was also sharing my account with a few friends and everyone was content with it.

    But then again everyone had much or less some computer background so maybe we didn't require the eye candy that much.

    Plus usually cPanel hosts were more expensive, or so I remember.

    But maybe for people who doesn't know anything but only heard some stuff from around cPanel is a must since it doesn't require much to manage your site with it.

    As for comparing cPanel and Plesk, I used cPanel many years ago and now my server has Plesk installed on it due to giving access to friends and family and I can say Plesk is more complex and to me, it's easy to break down.

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