Web hosting would be a lot more complicated and very difficult to manage if not for Web Hosting Panels. Many people do not have any idea of what Web hosting panels mean but I can bet you know what cPanel is.
Now that you’re starting to understand me, I have to say that while it is possible to host a website without the need for a web hosting control panel, they actually do make the job less time-consuming and easier, to manage website installations.
What is a Web Hosting Control Panel?
A web hosting control panel is a web-based interface provided by a web hosting service that allows users to manage their servers and hosted services. You can actually refer to them as the OS that runs web hosting.
Some of the most popular ones include cPanel, Plesk, and Webmin.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is a WHCP that provides a GUI and automation tools that make it easier for the web administrator to manage to host services and website instances.
cPanel is owned by cPanel LLC and is the most popular control panel that is in use as of today.
What is Plesk?
Plesk is a WHCP that works great in both windows and Linux server environments. Plesk is best known for being very easy to use and manage.
With the control panel, it is easy to set up new websites, reseller accounts, email accounts, edit and create DNS entries, among other functions, through a web-based interface.
Plesk has its own certification module that can be gotten from Plesk University.
Plesk vs cPanel
Before we go ahead, below is a simple table that shows the basic difference between Plesk and cPanel.
| Property | cPanel | Plesk |
| License | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| BSD Support | Retired | No |
| Linux Support | Yes | Yes |
| Windows Support | Yes | Yes |
| Frontend Code | Perl | PHP |
| Backend Code | Perl | PHP/MySQL |
| Plugin Support | Yes | Yes |
| HTTP/2 Support | Yes | Yes |
| IPV6 Support | Yes | Yes |
| Multiserver Support | Yes | Yes |
| File Manager | Yes | Yes |
| FTP | Yes | Yes |
| Email Security | Yes | Yes |
| Email Forwarding | Yes | Yes |
| Mailbox Quota | Yes | Yes |
| CMS Quick Install | Yes | Yes |
| Domains and Subdomain | Yes | Yes |
| SSL | Yes | Yes |
| Backup Management | Yes (Complex to use) | Yes (Easy to use) |
| Migration | Yes | Yes |
Now that we have given a good overview of the differences between both platforms, let’s dig a bit deeper at some of the more important specifics that will be more useful for the end user.
Ease of Use
As someone who has used both platforms, to be honest, I’ve used cPanel much longer, I believe that Plesk is way easier to use than cPanel simply because it has an interface that feels more familiar to most CMS users.
The thing is if you find your way around WordPress, you can definitely figure out Plesk on your own and actually find your way around and also appear like a pro in less than four hours.
I sampled my assumptions with a few people and most of them, who have some basic cPanel and WordPress knowledge, actually got used to using Plesk really fast.
Security
Installing and managing free SSL certificates appear to be much easier in Plesk than in cPanel. An easy way to go around this complexity for cPanel though is to have your web host support install and activate your SSL on cPanel.
Plesk also comes with a lot of other security features that are not present in cPanel out of the box but that doesn’t mean cPanel is not secure, it only means Plesk has more robust security out of the box.
WordPress and Joomla Support
OOTB, Plesk has an easy-to-install WordPress and Joomla Toolkit, for cPanel though, you will need to have an app installer to get that functionality with most web hosting companies. Chances are your web hosting companies already have softaculous bundled with their instance of cPanel.
Support
Plesk does provide a 24/7 Support system via call and chat and it doesn’t matter if you’re a paying customer or not. Everyone gets good support.
cPanel on the other hand has a ticketing system for free support and a $65 fee if you want priority phone support. The fee is not per month or per year. It’s per incident.
Pricing
Plesk’s pricing starts at $10 a month while cPanel starts at just $5 higher. All through the pricing tiers cPanel is always a bit more expensive than Plesk.
HTTP/2 Support
Plesk supports HTTP/2 completely while cPanel on the other hand offers it as a not supported customization. While you can activate HTTP/2 on your cPanel instance, you will not be able to get support for it from cPanel at the moment.
cPanel does in fact plan to provide full support for HTTP/2 but the timeline for that is not known as of now.
Our Verdict
At CharityHost, we have used both control panels and we strongly recommend Plesk over cPanel at this time especially because it offers a better site performance than cPanel and offers a higher security level.
We do run Plesk on our servers and can deploy Plesk on your cloud or dedicated servers when you choose to host with us.
An important performance point for Plesk is that it also uses Nginx and Apache2. 😉