cPanel vs. Microsoft IIS

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
cPanel
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
cPanel headquartered in Houston provides website hosting providers with workload and server automation, as well as a management console for creating and launching websites, managing email and web files, and other administrative tasks.
$15.99
per month
Microsoft IIS
Score 8.1 out of 10
N/A
Microsoft IIS is an application server and infrastructure.N/A
Pricing
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Editions & Modules
cPanel Solo
$15.99
per month for 1 account
Admin
$24.99
per month up to 5 accounts
Pro
$35.99
per month up to 30 accounts
Premier (on cloud)
$53.99
per month up to 100 accounts
Premier (on metal)
$53.99
per month up to 100 accounts
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Features
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
cPanel
-
Ratings
Microsoft IIS
7.5
28 Ratings
6% below category average
IDE support00 Ratings8.020 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings7.028 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.028 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings8.028 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings9.028 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings5.017 Ratings
Best Alternatives
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.2 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vCenter
VMware vCenter
Score 9.0 out of 10
NGINX
NGINX
Score 9.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(14 ratings)
8.9
(28 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(5 ratings)
10.0
(9 ratings)
Availability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Performance
-
(0 ratings)
7.8
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(9 ratings)
9.4
(6 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
cPanelMicrosoft IIS
Likelihood to Recommend
cPanel
I personally use it for any website hosting I do for me and others. There are a few others but I have stuck with the old tried and true and it always works for me and I know how to get around it so it has become a breeze for me. For those who are extremely new to websites and hosting or to those with very little technical know how cPanel could be very overwhelming and they might want to do like a managed WordPress hosting where they don't really have to see or deal with cPanel. I also probably wouldn't use it for straight email hosting. If you have thousands of cPanel accounts it may get very expensive and that could be a factor.
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Microsoft
Publishing applications or websites is easy with Microsoft IIS. You don't need external software or complicated tutorials involving command lines and editing configuration files. On other hand, sometimes the troubleshooter needs a high knowledge of Windows Server, Registry, and tools to debug the application. If you need to host non-Microsoft technology as PHP pages or have a low budget, I recommend IIS equivalent software as Apache.
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Pros
cPanel
  • The dashboard is very intuitive. Even beginners can figure out how to do things without very much help.
  • The online community is very helpful and the online documentation makes administering any tasks a lot easier.
  • User creation and administration for FTP access is also very simple.
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Microsoft
  • A big advantage that we use all the time is reviewing the logs that automatically get generated in IIS. It has helped us troubleshoot various problems in our applications over the years.
  • IIS integrates really well with Visual Studio and TFS. We are able to quickly deploy new applications and changes to applications when requested by the business.
  • IIS has proven that it is easy to configure and maintain with minimal effort.
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Cons
cPanel
  • The costs can be a limiting factor for some businesses if you are not using a web hosting company that uses it. I have been experimenting with Cloud hosting, which can be very daunting for the novice. There is an option to install it on the cloud but it is expensive.
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Microsoft
  • Angular/node apps don't run on IIS, or at least we never figured out how. Rather we ended up using nginx.
  • There are still occasional memory leaks - check your recycle settings!
  • If you have very heavy usage for web APIs, IIS requires regular restarts for reasons unknown.
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Likelihood to Renew
cPanel
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
We have no intention to replace all applications running on top of the IIS platform. Not all applications support other platforms and not all support staff are skilled in Linux/Apache platform support. Whereas IIS may not be the best performing or most secure web platform available, for the aforementioned reasons, it is impossible not to continue use of this product.
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Usability
cPanel
Although it can be a little bit bloated with a lot of options and configurations, it's very straightforward to use and maintain. So it's a great option even if you don't have large experience in hosting configuration. The WHM tool is more suited to heavy users since it requires more expertise, so it has a steep learning curve to better understand how to use it.
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Microsoft
As I've mentioned earlier, Microsoft IIS is very simple and easy to use. The user interface is a little bit overloaded with a huge number of different options, but once you have a little clue of what you are doing and what you need - no issues at all.
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Reliability and Availability
cPanel
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
ARR (application request routing) in Microsoft IIS Server enables the web-admins to increase the web app reliability and availability through the rule based routing and load balancing of HTTP requests which in turn provides highly available server. IIS 7.0 Manager also provides kernel as well as user mode caching for faster performance and in case if the server fails, the IIS server has good amount of details logged in its log files which help understand and debug the cause quickly. Load balancing facilitates IIS server to fight against availability issues.
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Performance
cPanel
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
In my experience, I have never had significant issues with IIS performance. Sometimes I've experienced issues with loading time, but it is mostly related to the web site code. However Amazon, Microsoft and Google providing free cloud services with very limited resources, and in that scenario, "heavy" websites on IIS could be the issue. In other situations - performance is good.
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Support Rating
cPanel
The support comes in the form of an extensive library of how to articles and community input. For most situations this will give you plenty of information and resources to trouble shoot. Live support really then would need to default to the hosting provider who provides the cPanel for your use.
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Microsoft
As mentioned earlier there is so much documentation or guides or stack overflow questions out there that someone will have faced the same or very similar scenario to what you are going through that you will almost certainly find a solution to what you are after.
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Alternatives Considered
cPanel
The direct server management tool access provided by cPanel hosting accounts is far superior to any shared or "standard" web site hosting packaged offered by any of the numerous web host providers I have used and or evaluated over the 20+ years of my experience working in the internet industry.
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Microsoft
Apache is java. Java is unnecessary complex. No developer wants to invest in learning all the hundreds of text based configuration files to get something done. Also, apache gives you the most evil and un-usable user interface possible. [Microsoft] IIS makes [life] after development easy, which is already complex enough to be bothered by something as mundane as exposing your work over the internet.
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Scalability
cPanel
No answers on this topic
Microsoft
Microsoft IIS Server is scalable if the underlying server configuration is done correctly. Use x64 edition v/s 32bit and using 32bit mode application pools are some of the tweaks to be done to make the IIS server scalable. There are too many small configurations need to be carried out in order to make a highly scalable IIS server hence not giving full score in this area.
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Return on Investment
cPanel
  • cPanel makes back end server administration easy. This saves time and overall effort.
  • cPanel is readily available with most hosting packages. It integrates with both Apache and Nginx.
  • cPanel allows you to perform some of the same functions as WHM, but with an easier interface.
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Microsoft
  • Allowing us to internally host our monitoring websites allows quick access to data that can be quite hidden, saving developer time.
  • It was inexpensive compared to more bulky solutions saving upfront cost.
  • It’s easy to install and enable allowing more developer savings.
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ScreenShots