As the owner of a hosting company, I have made several decisions regarding which server to use, what kind of control panel should I provide, should I add features to my hosting, how many resources should I include, etc. In my opinion, one of the most important decisions in hosting is choosing how your users will use the service, meaning what control panel should I use? There are many options for Linux including, Plesk, LXAdmin, and the most popular: CPanel.
CPanel is the control panel that I choose to use for Matthouse hosting accounts, but why did I choose CPanel, what are its advantages and disadvantages?
I suppose I should first begin with a small description of what CPanel is. CPanel allows the hosting client to modify all aspects of their site from an easy to use web-based interface such as FTP accounts, Email accounts, statistics, subdomains, additional domains to host, etc. CPanel makes it very easy for the hosting company to give the client total control of their website without the requirement of providing full server access.
Here are the advantages of using CPanel:
- Its very easy to install, just install Linux and run the installation script, it will configure most of your server automatically
- Cpanel provides a very easy visual interface where you can manage your server. There are several panels that are meant for administrators, clients, and even email users. There are also very easy to follow tutorials posted on CPanel’s website for those users who may not know where to start
- Cpanel automates most of the hosting experience which reduces stress on the hosting company
So, what are the disadvantages of hosting with CPanel?
- I personally believe that CPanel is meant for websites that are small to medium. CPanel itself is a resource hog and requires at least 256MB of ram on the server to run, and this amount probably won’t even run a website getting 200 hits a day without running out of memory or running into swap space on the server. Most servers will have much more RAM than this, but a base install should not require more than 50 to 60MB of ram.
- On a default install, CPanel usually is optimized for a dedicated server with 4 to 16GB of RAM. Even the VPS Optimized version of CPanel requires additional configuration to keep CPanel within check. If you don’t do initial configuration in Apache, etc, you may run into memory errors easily since Apache will start up 20 to 30 processes at 1 to 6MB a piece. In addition, most of the Apache configuration is default and many modules are missing such as Source Gaurdian which will protect PHP code from hurting your server. In addition, CPanel doesn’t secure SSH or FTP, you you should still install a firewall and tighten SSH security.
- CPanel is software which contains vulnerabilities just like any other software. Cpanel updates run nightly, however what happens if someone discovers a security risk and decides to attack your server before the updates are pushed to your server covering the vulnerability? To come back to my past disadvantage of Cpanel is meant for small to medium sites, I believe this aids to the arguement that big sites are more likely to be hacked than smaller sites.
- CPanel costs money to license. This is rarely a factor to most big sites and companies because they have that kind of money to spend for something easy to use, however CPanel licenses are not cheap. This really could be neither and advantage of disadvantage, but its worth sticking on my list of points to consider.
So when would I recommend a CPanel installation? Thats simple, I’d recommend it for hosting companies that host many sites on a single server. It reduces stress on the hosting company, and generally these servers have plentiful resources to handle CPanel in its entirety. Also sites that are generally on shared CPanel hosting are not big enough to have a good probability of being hacked.
When would I not recommend installing CPanel. I would personally say never install CPanel on a large site that gets over 5000 unique hits a day or more. CPanel may make administering the site easier, however most sites that are this big bring in a lot of revenue and paying for CPanel could be just slightly cheaper than hiring an experienced server administrator or a friend to run the server without CPanel. Installing the core components and configuring them manually will also ensure that you have minimal code that can be hacked (Yes, web servers are software). I’ve always been taught that the less code you use, the less likely there will be problems with it.
Thats all the time I have. I might follow up on this depending on how many comments I receive.
More From FamousPhil.com
Tags: CPanel, Host, hosting, Linux, Manager, Web, WHM
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration
[...] Advantages / Disadvantages of using WHM / CPanel [...]
Since cPanel 11.23, we have substantially optimized our software to reduce memory consumption on both dedicated servers and VPSs. As soon as you install cPanel/WHM on a VPS, it will detect that it is in a virtual environment and optimize itself accordingly. If you are moving from an older version of cPanel/WHM that is already in a VPS, this optimization will occur automatically upon updating to the latest version.
With 11.24, we also allow you to choose lighter-weight services such as NSD and Dovecot to lessen memory consumption, which is very important in VPS environments. While we still officially recommend a minimum of 256 MB of dedicated RAM for VPS systems, some customers have reduced their VPS memory consumption well below this recommendation without any modification to configurations or services used.
You can read feedback about cPanel VPS Optimized (11.23) at: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=699944
With 11.24 (VPS Optimized 2), we have performed further enhancements to further reduce memory consumption.
We have customers with servers that have a few websites that attract hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a day before actions about cutting back on stats generation etc. need to be taken. Of course, we also have several customers with 5000+ accounts on their dedicated servers (let alone the unique visitors they attract) running on contemporary hardware without issue.
If this is inconsistent with your experience with our software, please update to the latest version of cPanel/WHM and consider letting our technical analysts take a look at things for you.
Regarding security, I still recommend taking proper security precautions for shared hosting regardless of the size of websites. This includes including site software such as WordPress is up to date, reviewing security mechanisms available in WHM’s Security Center as well as considering other mechanisms such as SuExec and SuPHP which are available via EasyApache.
While many of our resellers offer licensing on a monthly basis, you can also acquire cPanel/WHM licenses for a 1-year, 2-year or 3-year timeframe as well.
Much of our development lately has revolved around making our product more efficient. Feel welcome to review the release notes for 11.24 yourself at your convenience at:
http://www.cpanel.net/products/cpwhm/cpanel11/new-features.htm
[...] Matuskiewicz from FamousPhil.com recently wrote a blog about CPanel advantages and disadvantages here. He disliked it and called it bloatware and to some extent the old versions were. Now scroll down [...]
Mr. Grega,
Thank you for posting on this blog. I do not dislike CPanel, it is impressive software and I will always continue to use it.
I feel that for huge websites, CPanel may not be the best option. I believe in finding the right tools for the right job. That was my main point in this blog although I may have only skimmed over it.
I also am impressed with the new optimized versions of CPanel and I hope that you continue to move in the same direction of optimization! I look forward to seeing more optimizations and quicker speeds in the future. I also hope to see a more sleek WHM interface in the future.
Thanks!
Phil
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