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
xMatters
Score 10.0 out of 10
N/A
xMatters is an IT alert management solution for enterprises. It is cloud-based incident management software that enables business processes or applications to trigger two-way communications (text, voice, email, SMS, etc.) during time-sensitive events.
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.
We use xMatters for our alerting on critical matters. ServiceNow is our incident management system and it ties into xMatters. When a critical alert is generated it will notify the appropriate party. I'm trying to see if two other departments can use it. We are looking for a refrigeration system and for weather alerts when bad storms are coming
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.
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.
xMatters has a pretty good UI. However, its versatility does get in the way a little as the number of options can be overwhelming, and it sometimes takes a while to find the place you want, or get the result you want. I don't have any suggestions on how to fix this, it's just a side effect of the complexity that xMatters offers.
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.
Working with xMatters support has been fantastic! Our support rep is very friendly, helpful, and knowledgeable. We get quick response times when asking questions, and when we have more complex problems, it's easy to schedule a call and spend some time working through our issues together. Every time we've had a problem we've been able to get the info we need and get a resolution easily.
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.
xMatters is a market leader among many new burgeoning products in the stakeholder notification space. They are historically one of two original enterprise products in this space. Great client base of large companies and good reputation. xMatters offers flexible licensing models, depending on functional needs. It's easy to learn and use but slightly more difficult to administer.
Managers are able to pull reports faster for any incidents escalated to their team.
When needing to contact another on-call associate from another team, xMatters provides conference bridge lines. You don't have to set up meetings through Outlook or Skype.
