Plesk Control Panel
All hosting accounts come with some kind of control panel software. The control panel is what allows you to make changes to your account, including adding applications like Joomla or Drupal, uploading files, or creating new ones. Some hosting providers offer their own, proprietary control panel software, but the majority of them rely on one of the big three- cPanel, Plesk, or Virtuozzo.
Many users prefer to use cPanel because it's ubiquitous in the hosting industry, and open source. Since it's free and common, this means that the majority of content management have been developed and tested on cPanel, which makes integrating things like WordPress into your site a lot easier. That said, there are some extremely compelling reasons to choose Plesk over cPanel.
To start with, Plesk makes website creation super fast. This control panel has some really nice site creation wizards integrated right into it. If you're not familiar with HTML, don't have a website development professional on staff, or just can't be bothered to write all of those lines of code, then Plesk can still help you pump out attractive, functioning websites in a short period of time. With Plesk v. 10.4, users can even preview what their sites will look and act like before their DNS entries propagate.
If you're a hosting reseller, Plesk has integrated billing software that makes it easy to set up hosting packages for your clients, and get you your money. It also allows you to give your own clients access to site building software, domain names, SSL protection, and more. For resellers without support staff, Plesk offers some self-support functionality for hosting clients that helps simplify things on the host's end.
If you like the number of one-click installable programs you get with cPanel, you'll like Plesk even more. While cPanel offers users around fifty or so different programs, Plesk has a selection of over two hundred and fifty applications, including favorites like WordPress. Their easy app installation rivals cPanel's, so people that are considering switching to Plesk will be happy to know that they can still get the same one-click functionality that they did with cPanel.
Lastly, if you're familiar with a Windows desktop, you'll have no problem navigating Plesk's user interface. The makers of Plesk have gone out of their way to provide a product that's as user friendly as possible. Part of that is Plesk's familiar look and feel, but Plesk also has a stripped-down basic UI that novice users can turn on if they find the regular UI to complicated and confusing.
Though Plesk might not be the most popular control panel out there, it's still a very good, workable option for everyone from a novice site owner to an advanced user. It's user friendly, fast, and comes packed with addons that can help you develop any kind of site you want, and quickly. If you're debating between cPanel and Plesk for your (or your customers') hosting control panel, don't get caught up in all of the cPanel hype- Plesk is definitely worth your consideration, no matter what you're using your hosting for.
