Hello,
I think I would be asking people here talking about cPanel how they choosing cPanel over Plesk. Some are saying a flat statement that cPanel is the most popular, or cPanel is the best. cPanel is popular in the US and Canada, but Plesk is the most popular everywhere else in the world. I have both cPanel and Plesk servers, and even with cPanels latest updated they are no where near the functionality of Plesk in relivace these days. Their days of dominance in the industry is limited, and I have been in hosting since 1995. I started with cPanel and Plesk around 2000 but have been following both of them since they hit the scene around 1999.
Everyone has a choice, but if you are asking about Plesk.... I hope it is clear that is my choice of which one is the most relevance to what customers needs today... I will explain why I say it is the best choice.
For Price and Usablity: Plesk has 3 licenses which provide one install to cover 10, 30 and unlimited domains... Priced to meet your needs, not one size
fits all.. who really likes that model.
As far as useablity, Plesk is one software, not two, At Intergrated a Business and Non Business UI. If you are a hosting provider or need to provide customers with controlled access and resource control, You can have Admin, Reseller, Customer, and User Rolls, and Multi FTP, which cPanel doesn't do well at all. If you are fully manage shop, turn off busienss logic and your life is easy, with Admin, and as many Staff members as you need.
PHP Intergration Plesk covers PHP 5.2 - 7.1.x with full Admin control of PHP, and customer controlled selection down to the domain web space with easy edit of PHP.ini values... using cgi, fastcgi, or FPM on Apache, Apache+ Nginx, or fpm with just Nginx all by itself, again selectable at the individual domain.
Ruby and Node.js multi language versions and full control at each domain just like PHP
The biggest item in hosting Wordpress Toolkit Alone kills it - do you host WordPress websites??? if you say yes then Plesk is the only answer for you, unless you have so much time on your hands and you like working on site updates, and not winning new clients. The WordPress toolkit does both Custom and one Click installs, manual and Automated Upgrades of the Core, Mass management of ALL WP instances from the Admin or Reseller Panel. Mass and Indivual management of Plugins and Themes, Real working Cloning(Staging) and Flexible Syncing, Security Scans, and if you check out Plesk's website they have caching, and a ton more features comeing every month.
Plesk by their definition has left being a control panel and are now a platform. They have an eco system of over 70+ extensions which allow my customers to pick and choose how they want their Plesk server setup, choosing services they like over those they do not like. Some like a lot of security and IT stuff, others like the extension like Patchman which keeps CMS's 0day updated, Others like the cloudflare, modsecurity and fail2ban. Some like some of the Social applications. Me, I like that there are a ton of free ones and then there are some I can sell and I make more money off them, so to me Plesk is not only a platform now, it is a revenue generating platform.
I do not come out much to play in the forum, I am a busy guy and I do not advertise my business here, but on these questions of Plesk and cPanel... I think things should be put out there fair. Again I have used both for my customers over the past 17 years. Some people like one over the other. For years Plesk was absent because they competed with other software Sw-Soft/Parallels was also selling. Haveing watched Plesk since Jan 2016 when they became an independant company and 100% dedicated to Plesk... those days are clearly gone. If the Plesk today is the result of 1 year, and how they taking over from cPanel... what do you think they have up their sleeves for the next year or two. I am excited to see personally. Just my two cents, and an explination of why I feel that way.
