Reviews and Comparison of Hostgator Control Panels - cPanel vs. Plesk
Hostgator provides the two control panels of cPanel and Plesk for its
clients. Both control panel systems allow clients to configure their
websites, view statistics, configure email accounts, view the files they
uploaded to the server, etc. The difference is how each is organized.
The makers of cPanel and the makers of Plesk have taken different
approaches to organizing their control panel.
cPanel is a Unix based web hosting control panel that provides a
graphical interface and automation tools designed to simplify the
process of hosting a web site. The cPanel control panel is very popular
and is organized so that most functionality is available via icons on
the cPanel home page. For many people, this arrangement makes it easy to
locate what they want to do since almost everything is on one
page. cPanel utilizes a three tier structure that provides capabilities
for administrators, resellers, and end-user website owners to control
the various aspects of website and server administration through a
standard web browser.
Once installed, cPanel cannot be removed (without extreme
difficulty). The server must be formatted, and the operating system
reinstalled. Similarly, it should only be installed on a freshly
installed operating system with minimal prior configuration. To the
client, cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations,
including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP
accounts, and mailing lists. cPanel manages some software packages
separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to
Apache, PHP, MySQL, and related software packages automatically.
Parallels Plesk Panel allows a server administrator to set up
websites, email accounts, reseller accounts, and DNS entries through a
web-based interface. The administrator can create client and site
templates, which predetermine resource-allocation parameters for the
domains and/or clients. Plesk 11 from Parallels is the control panel
Hostgator offers on Windows hosting accounts. Unlike cPanel, Plesk is
organized into sections with different functions on different pages.
Plesk or cPanel licenses are often offered for free in shared hosting
plans, but on VPS and dedicated server plans, clients sometimes have to
pay for their control panel. Generally, cPanel is cheaper than Plesk.
On the other hand, unlike cPanel that only runs on Linux distributions
of CentOS, RedHat and CloudLinux, Plesk can also support Windows.
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