cPanel vs. NGINX

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
cPanel
Score 8.8 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
NGINX
Score 9.1 out of 10
Mid-Size Companies (51-1,000 employees)
NGINX, a business unit of F5 Networks, powers over 65% of the world's busiest websites and web applications. NGINX started out as an open source web server and reverse proxy, built to be faster and more efficient than Apache. Over the years, NGINX has built a suite of infrastructure software products o tackle some of the biggest challenges in managing high-transaction applications. NGINX offers a suite of products to form the core of what organizations need to create…N/A
Pricing
cPanelNGINX
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
cPanelNGINX
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
cPanelNGINX
Features
cPanelNGINX
Application Servers
Comparison of Application Servers features of Product A and Product B
cPanel
-
Ratings
NGINX
8.7
32 Ratings
9% above category average
IDE support00 Ratings7.617 Ratings
Security management00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
Administration and management00 Ratings8.827 Ratings
Application server performance00 Ratings9.327 Ratings
Installation00 Ratings8.929 Ratings
Open-source standards compliance00 Ratings9.025 Ratings
Best Alternatives
cPanelNGINX
Small Businesses
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Apache HTTP Server
Apache HTTP Server
Score 9.1 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
NinjaOne
NinjaOne
Score 9.1 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vCenter
VMware vCenter
Score 8.3 out of 10
Apache Tomcat
Apache Tomcat
Score 8.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
cPanelNGINX
Likelihood to Recommend
9.2
(14 ratings)
8.9
(50 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Usability
7.0
(5 ratings)
8.3
(3 ratings)
Support Rating
8.3
(9 ratings)
8.1
(4 ratings)
User Testimonials
cPanelNGINX
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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F5
Nginx is well-suited for any web server scenarios, such as web applications, backend or reverse proxy for both application and HTTP requests, and distribution. It is less appropriate for Windows-based applications that run directly on a Windows Server host. In any case, it is very easy to manage, through separate conf files for each application or site you want to host with it.
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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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F5
  • Very low memory usage. Can handle many more connections than alternatives (like Apache HTTPD) due to low overhead. (event-based architecture).
  • Great at serving static content.
  • Scales very well. Easy to host multiple Nginx servers to promote high availability.
  • Open-Source (no cost)!
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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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F5
  • Customer support can be strangely condescending, perhaps it's a language issue?
  • I find it a little weird how the release versions used for Nginx+ aren't the same as for open source version. It can be very confusing to determine the cross-compatibility of modules, etc., because of this.
  • It seems like some (most?) modules on their own site are ancient and no longer supported, so their documentation in this area needs work.
  • It's difficult to navigate between nginx.com commercial site and customer support. They need to be integrated together.
  • I'd love to see more work done on nginx+ monitoring without requiring logging every request. I understand that many statistics can only be derived from logs, but plenty should work without that. Logging is not an option in many environments.
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Likelihood to Renew
cPanel
No answers on this topic
F5
Great value for the 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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F5
This tool is really easy to use and configure. Consumes very less system resources. It is highly modular and configurable. You can easily use it with other tools like certbot for SSLs. You can configure basic security with configuration and headers
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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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F5
Community support is great, and they've also had a presence at conferences. Overall, there is no shortage of documentation and community support. We're currently using it to serve up some WordPress sites, and configuring NGINX for this purpose is well documented.
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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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F5
I have found that [NGINX] seems to perform better throughout the years with less issues although I've used Apache more. I would definitely recommend [NGINX] for any high volume site and I've seen this to usually be the case from most provided web hosts who will pick [NGINX] over alternatives
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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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F5
  • By using Nginx, we can host multiple web services on a single server, keeping our infrastructure costs lower.
  • Nginx maintains our HTTPS connections, allowing us to keep our promise to our customers that their data is safe in transit.
  • Due to Nginx's extremely low failure rate, our web addresses always return something meaningful, even when individual services go down. In sense, this means we are "always online" and allows us to maintain brand and support our customers even in the face of catastrophe.
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ScreenShots

NGINX Screenshots

Screenshot of Overview of the NGINX Application PlatformScreenshot of NGINX Controller - MonitoringScreenshot of NGINX Controller - Configuration