cPanel Vs Plesk - Which will be your choice?

Posted by Sharmin Islam on August 5th, 2019

When you are a business owner, you must have to look for ways you can manage your website with a minimum hassle. Web hosting control panel is a very popular tool that provides a graphical interface to the users for managing the resources of a hosting service. There are some identical features that all the control panels have, such as FTP management, database management, email management, etc. Almost all the web hosting companies provide some most popular control panels like cPanel, Plesk, hPanel, Direct Admin, Webmin, and ISPmanager with their managed servers.

A control panel is all about to manage hosted services in a single place. When choosing a control panel, you must pick the option that is feature-rich and will suit your needs perfectly. cPanel & Plesk are the two contenders dominating the market of server management tools. They are similar in many ways but also have some differences. Now, we’re making a comparison between the two options, mentioning their features and stability.

Operating System

The major difference between the Plesk & cPanel control panels is that cPanel is only available on the Linux distributions whereas Plesk is available on both Windows Server and Linux operating systems. cPanel is compatible with CentOS, Cloud Linux and Red Hat operating systems. On the other hand, as with Windows Servers, Plesk is available on CentOS, Ubuntu and Debian including 14 Linux distributions. 

Interface

The user interfaces of Plesk and cPanel are very similar to use. Both are considered to have an easier graphical user interface. cPanel provides a one-click installation of apps using Softaculous with its graphical interface which Plesk does not yet provide.

Pricing & Trial

Plesk and cPanel, both offer a free trial license so that you can get a feel of the product before making a purchase. cPanel has announced a new pricing structure to the Partners, Distributors, and cPanel Store customers that's more than ever. Let’s see the pricing shortly:  

• For 1 account - /month

• For 5 accounts – /month

• For 30 accounts – /month

• For 100 accounts – /month + --content--.20 for each additional account

In comparing to cPanel, the price of Plesk is reasonable in spite of its newly announced pricing structure.

WordPress Support

Plesk provides a WordPress toolkit with a full list of automation & management features vital for the scalable WordPress infrastructure support. It delivers automatic updates to the WordPress Toolkit with new features every month. On the other hand, the cPanel WordPress Manager is far away from perfection because it needs to do much to catch up.

User-Friendliness

The graphical interface of cPanel has been optimized to be user-friendly and highly responsive. Users find no issue while handling the control panel on their system as it supports several simple commands to manage complex functions. Unlike cPanel, some functions of Plesk are not easy to use rather complex for the users who are actually the beginners. 

Performance

Plesk has slower loading speed when compared to cPanel, particularly with Linux servers. cPanel is the most used control panel that loads faster than Plesk by focusing on optimizing the performance and provides faster times for account creation and other server management tasks.

Security

Both Plesk and cPanel, both come with numerous security tools, although they are different in providing some features. Fail2ban intrusion prevention, inbound and outbound email antispam and active directory integration is all the security features Plesk provides with instant response to issues. It has also some security vulnerabilities that make it different from cPanel. cPanel offers AutoSSL, cPHulk, built-in support of CSF/LFD and some other useful features, although it takes days to implement a security fix.

Which will be your choice?

You can make your decision based on your needs and the operating system you’re using. Each of them is suitable for different perspectives. cPanel is a popular and most used form of the control panel that works with Linux-based servers which dominate the majority of the Internet. It can be a more affordable option if you have a large number of websites. MyLightHost is a web hosting service provider that offers cPanel to power websites around the world at a potentially lower cost. On the other hand, if you’re looking to stay on a single control panel when using multiple servers, then Plesk can be your choice. As mentioned above that both of them have some regular features with some drawbacks that make them separate from each other. So, you have to make your decision regarding the pros and cons of the two most popular control panel types.