cPanel and Plesk are the most widely used and popular web hosting control panels. This article will provide you with an informative insight on both of them so that it becomes easy for you to decide which one is good for you. This article compares cPanel and Plesk for the end user; it does not include server level comparison.
Support For Operating System
Both cPanel and Plesk support various server platforms like Windows, Linux and FreeBSD cpnael . There is almost no difference in the support provided for various web hosting platforms. For Windows, cPanel is branded as Enkompass. Therefore, if you opt for a Windows operating system, you can avail of Plesk and Enkompass. Where as in case of Linux, you can get both, cPanel and Plesk.
Interface
Both cPanel and Plesk are equipped with easy, fast and intuitive interfaces. cPanel’s interface is much easier and all the prominent features can be directly accessed through the front page itself. This is the main reason why most of the people opt for a cPanel hosting platform. Thus, if you are working with cPanel, you don’t really have to put in a lot of efforts for the common web hosting tasks.
On the other hand, Plesk is structured in distinct sections. Therefore, the end user might take some time to get accustomed to it. Once you understand the interface of the Plesk control panel, you can start working faster with it.
Functionality
When it comes to functionality, there is no much of a difference between cPanel and Plesk. In most of the cases, you won’t miss any specific thing if you move from one control panel to another. When it comes to switching the control panel, we would like to mention here that the two control panels are unfortunately not compatible with each other. This goes on to say that if you create an account backup on any one of these control panels, you will not be able to restore it with the other.
Admin Panels
cPanel comes with the Web Host Manager (WHM) as standard. With the basic web hosting platforms like blog hosting and shared hosting, the end user might not be able to access WHM. Plesk has a single login for the administrators and users and it also provides with a single interface.
Setup and Use
cPanel features two independent applications : cPanel for the website owners and WHM for the server administrators. Accessing these two applications comprises of two different processes. Plesk enables both administrators and website owners to access the accounts through a single point. If you log in as administrator, you get access to better and advanced set of tools and features. On this front, Plesk is a little less complicated as compared to cPanel. You can observe the same ease in terms of setup as well, Plesk’s setup comprises of repetitive clicking on the ‘Next’ button on the other had the cPanel setup process is a little cohesive.
It’s hard to determine which one is a better control panel between cPanel and Plesk. Selecting any one of these control panels is mostly a matter of personal preference. The simple interface of the cPanel control panel allures people to opt for a cPanel powered web hosting platform. You can see a cPanel control panel demo to analyze the interface before selecting any web hosting platform.
