Hello and welcome to the blog.
You probably know the old saying ‘out with the old and in with the new’. It’s not a new concept, and in a lot of ways it seems to make sense. Older appliances break down, so we replace them with a newer counterpart. In so doing we tend to gain efficiencies, or enjoy new features not present with the older model.
If you met me during the last decade, you would hear me state decidedly that cPanel was the very best panel in the industry. While it’s direct competitor Plesk felt more secure – as though it were a developer’s hosting platform, cPanel was to me the ‘everyone’s platform’. Imagine not knowing what you’re doing, and still being able to build and publish a decent website! Trust me, as someone who attempted the quick and easy web design back in the Angelfire days, cPanel was really opening a lot of doors for people. The evidence seemed clear.
In with the new?
cPanel is 21 years old, as of this writing. Plesk is 20. So if we’re tossing the old in exchange for the new, the difference is really negligible. And we are tossing the old out here. Don’t be mistaken one bit by the attractive ease of cPanel usage.
The proof is in the holiday pudding.
Price increases tell their own story. Both cPanel and Plesk are owned by WebPros, which we covered in an earlier post. And both are facing increases on Jan 1, 2021. Why don’t we look at those new prices:
cPanel:
$15 for 1 site
$22 for 5 sites
$32.25 for 30 sites
$48.50 for 100 sites
$0.30 per site over 100
Plesk:
$11 for 10 sites
$16.50 for 30 sites including WordPress ToolKit
$27.50 for unlimited sites on a VPS including WordPress ToolKit
$49.50 for unlimited sites on a dedicated server including WordPress ToolKit
What strikes me first is that with Plesk we’re not even given a 1-site option. That’s because 10 sites there is still better than 1 on cPanel. Let’s say that again, but slower.
Ten times as much, for less.
Now go ahead and review and compare the other costs. Two of the Plesk options offer unlimited sites. To me, that’s enough to say that the cost comparison is pretty much over. Plesk’s ahead on this big time. And that’s 100% with purpose.
It’s bigger than money.
If we peel back the layers on recent cPanel development, we’re going to see that the bulk of changes are carry-overs from what Plesk is already capable of. Pretty much everything “new” from cPanel is stuff that was done on Plesk first. Plesk supports a ton of things cPanel doesn’t like PHP 8, a bunch of security features, built-in incremental backups(Like what hosts pay JetBackup for on cPanel), NGINX support, and more. Also, Plesk has a leg up since they support a wider array of Operating Systems including Windows. Plesk even already supports CloudLinux 8 (which isn’t affected by the CentOS 8 news like cPanel is).
Another example is regarding the WordPress ToolKit cPanel released. They’re charging between $1.50 to $7.50 per site on-top of the cPanel License. On Plesk, they made the WordPress ToolKit 100% free and included with the newly priced $50 Plesk unlimited license.
Even when you install the official WordPress ToolKit for cPanel, it’s coming from the plesk dev team/servers. In a related shift, Solusvm.com looks to be on the way out, being replaced with Solus.io which is also already in use with Plesk.
The writing on the wall.
Prepare yourselves, everyone. We have been covering a decent amount of cPanel-related news in our posts. It’s becoming a lot like events of 2020 insofar that it could be expected we’re going to hear a lot more as the shift continues toward Plesk. With 75% market share and a more feature-rich product, it means that cPanel hopefuls will some day need to make the leap to something else.