Comprehensive features for hosting, fairly affordable
January 24, 2019
Comprehensive features for hosting, fairly affordable
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with cPanel
We used cPanel in the earlier stages of our company for centralizing basic web admin tools before we migrated to G Suite and serverless services. cPanel allowed us to manage files locally, set up Apache configurations, monitor emails, and local databases, as well as manage domains and certificates for websites. In the end, we switched to G Suite for the hosted services, DigitalOcean for our domain management, and Certbot/Python/Nginx for our certificates and security.
Pros
- Centralized service: cPanel has *a lot* of support out of the box for providing a comprehensive list of self-hosted services, like email, files, etc.
- Easy setup: The process of setting up service like this was super easy, the documentation is well-written, and there is lots of support through forums and tutorials.
- Pricing: Having a centralized service like this allows for being charged a fee monthly for the entire package, rather than per-user fees like hosting competitors.
Cons
- The interface isn't the best. It's a bit outdated and hard to get around. At times, there are lots of settings and options in one place, that can make interface quite cluttered.
- For servers, the pricing can be quite high, and become out of the range for smaller companies and early-stage companies.
- Learning how to use to the admin settings and interface can be quite tough, this is where the interface could use the most improvement. The documentation and tutorials for these features don't really help much, either.
- Positive: Centralized service that prices for the entire service, rather than per-user. This is cheaper if you have an earlier-stage company with lots of users.
- Negative: 3rd-party integrations can take a lot of time to set up, more time than necessary.
- Negative: Learning how to administration cPanel can take quite a lot of time, time that shouldn't' be spent on trying to figure out how to make cPanel work effectively.
cPanel has a better interface than Webmin in my opinion, better themes, and better out-of-the-box support for other systems/platforms for hosting and integrations. It is also easier to create and control Apache configurations, and there is a wider selection of 3rd-party integrations for cPanel that can be quite necessary for companies in later stages.
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