cPanel is an all-in-one Linux management panel you run on your own Linux servers. It includes management tools for everything from DNS & EMAIL to WordPress.
The company is owned and backed by Oakley Capital.
Both WPCloudDeploy and cPanel allow you to manage WordPress sites on a server All the key WordPress management tools are available in both offerings including:
Both WPCloudDeploy and cPanel offer options to sell WordPress hosting services.
There are three key differences between WPCloudDeploy and cPanel:
cPanel includes some limited customization options that are built-in but you can also install additional functionality from a suite of 1st party and 3rd party plugins. Plugins can be created by yourself or any other developer. However, you cannot customize the core cPanel code.
Because WPCloudDeploy is an open source product built on WordPress, the sky’s the limit when it comes to customizations and you have a lot of flexibility in how those are accomplished. You can:
As an experienced WordPress developer or manager, you can do many of the customizations yourself. Or you can ask any other WP developer to do the work for you. Or you can ask us of course.
cPanel has a locale system where you can translate it into any language/locale you need.
Similarly, WPCloudDeploy can adopt any language you like. All you have to do is provide the translation terms using any of the many standard WP translation tools.
You deploy cPanel onto each server you manage. It also has support for “clusters” and the ability to use a single console to manage multiple servers. This makes cPanel very flexible.
WPCloudDeploy can be run on any appropriately configured server anywhere and can be installed in multiple locations if necessary. With this flexibility you can:
cPanel does not have direct support for cloud providers – i.e.: You cannot provision a server at the cloud provider from inside your cPanel console.
WPCloudDeploy has built-in support for 12 providers (10 public cloud providers & 2 private cloud providers) as well as ability to “bring your own server”.
WPCloudDeploy also has an extension toolkit where you can build your own provider. Or you can ask to have one built for you at a cost of around 3K (for providers that generally follow the openstack api style format.)
cPanel allows direct access to your server with an ssh login. It has various cPanel-specific commands that help you manage the platform but not necessarily WordPress itself.
WPCloudDeploy uses Bash scripts that you can execute in either of two ways:
Sites deployed on cPanel uses a custom stack that includes APACHE, NGINX and MARIADB . However, because their servers are designed to run multiple types of services (not just WordPress) the stack is not fully optimized for WordPress.
WPCloudDeploy supports both a LEMP stack (Linux, NGINX, MySql/MariaDB, PHP) and a LOMP stack (Linux, OpenLiteSpeed, MySql/MariaDB, PHP).
cPanel has a per-server and per-account charge.
WPCloudDeploy charges a single annual fee or lifetime fee with no per-server or per-site limits. You have three levels to choose from based on the functionality you need.
You can transfer your sites using any WordPress backup tool. We recommend UPDRAFT PLUS though many folks seem to prefer using DUPLICATOR PRO (something we’re far less familiar with).
The above summary is only focused on the product differences and similarities. There are, of course, differences between the companies themselves – including large differences in operations, pricing, support policies, affiliate programs and more.
Both cPanel and WPCloudDeploy run on your own servers. If you need a tool that allow you to manage multiple application types (i.e.: more than WordPress), cPanel is a logical choice. If your primary requirement is an optimized WordPress solution then WPCloudDeploy is a much better choice.
Is anything in this article incorrect? If so, please feel free to contact us so we can apply corrections. As you might expect, corrections will be applied at our sole discretion subject to our ability to verify the new data.