Premium
High Frequency
StandardYou don’t need to be a developer to use Cloudways
Get free access to your dashboard for 3 days. Migrate your site and experience how easy it is to set up, manage and host your sites.
Best alternative to cPanel
Cloudways is the cPanel alternative anyone can use — not just developers
Cloudways is the visual platform to manage your websites, where everything takes half the time and half the clicks it takes with cPanel.
Get Started FREE3-day free trial — no credit card needed
Cloudways users know exactly what they want and how they want it
“I like feeling free of cPanel. I loathe cPanel. Cloudways has its own control panel and once I got used to the way it’s set up and its minimalism, I felt very comfortable.”
Rick Powell
WordPress ConsultantCategory leader in G2.com
Ease of Use
cPanel score: 9.0
Web hosting average: 8.6
Quality of Support
cPanel score: 8.7
Web hosting average: 8.3
Ease of Setup
cPanel score: 8.6
Web hosting average: 8.5
Old school is not always cool
cPanel was released 25 years ago. Even though traditional users like cPanel, a lot has changed in web hosting since 1996 that cPanel hasn’t caught up with yet.
cPanel:
- Was designed for devs with tech knowledge
- Makes you pay extra for basic features
- Puts you in charge of maintenance
Affordable Ecommerce Hosting Plans That Work for Everyone
Pick up a cloud hosting plan that you can always scale up/down to optimize operational costs.
40% off for 4 Months + Upto 30 Free Migrations. Upgrade Today
Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Notes:
- Free trial is not available for Amazon Web Services. You need to upgrade your account to launch and access AWS servers.
- With Amazon (AWS), Disk Sizes are configurable and Bandwidth is on pay as you go basis.
- Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
Notes:
- Free trial is not available for Google Compute Engine. You need to upgrade your account to launch and access GCE servers.
- With Google (GCE), Disk Sizes are configurable and Bandwidth is on pay as you go basis.
- Note: $0.033/GB per server will be applied for offsite backup storage.
All Plans Come With
- 24/7/365 Support
- Free SSL Certificates
- Free Migration
- Team Management
- Dedicated Firewalls
- 24/7 Real-time Monitoring
- Automated Backups
- Staging Environment
- Auto Healing
- Regular Security Patching
- HTTP/2 Enabled Servers
- SSH and SFTP Access
- Optimized With Advanced Caches
- Cloudflare Add-on NEW
- Unlimited Application Installation
- Free Object Cache Pro (2GB & above)
Users say cPanel’s outdated design makes it hard to use
“Nothing is where I expect it to be and I waste a lot of time just looking for things.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
“The UI should be developed, it’s not slow, but it’s old.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
“The visitor and error statistics tools are not intuitive. The user interface has an outdated design.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
“It literally aches me navigating the menus. Without technical knowledge you’ll probably break something.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
“I feel like visiting a webpage to do X will break Y if you try to visit Y before completing a Z action. A big old roundabout. Eugh.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
“The options for mailbox types are only two, both look hideous and give me an eye sore.”
Verified cPanel review on G2
You don’t need to be a developer to love Cloudways
Manage hundreds of sites without hassle, even if you’re not tech-savvy
Easy to use, visual interface
cPanel buries every action under menus and endless forms. Cloudways gets things done in a few clicks.
Free up time spent on maintenance
No more upgrades, patches and security tasks. Cloudways solves the boring admin stuff for you.
Best for agencies, not hosting providers
Agencies that don’t want clients dealing with admin tasks, love Cloudways managed services.
cPanel vs Cloudways
Cloudways makes hosting management faster and easier
The online world is becoming increasingly competitive. Choose a hosting solution that saves you time and guarantees performance as your business grows.
Basic configurations comparison
Hosting capabilities
cPanel doesn’t offer hosting — it’s only a control panel. Cloudways offers its own visual web hosting control panel on top of super-fast hosting servers.
High performance support
cPanel doesn’t offer hosting — it’s only a control panel. Cloudways offers its own visual web hosting control panel on top of super-fast hosting servers.
Server selection
Supports Digital Ocean, Linode, Azure, AWS, Amazon Lightsail and Google Cloud, as part of their Hyperscalers plan.
Choose from 5 different providers, no constraints: Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, and Google Cloud.
Ease of use
cPanel is an outdated system with tons of menus and forms. Cloudways lets you manage web servers and sites using a visual dashboard — no learning curve.
Sites per account
cPanel limits your accounts to 1, 5 or 30 on their lowest plans. Cloudways gives you unlimited sites on any plan.
Popularity
Being around since 1996, lots of traditional developers stick with cPanel.
Email hosting
cPanel lets you create and manage email accounts. At Cloudways we recommend separating email and web hosting. You can still get mailboxes with Cloudways as an add on service.
Ease of use & UI/UX comparison
New website creation
cPanel makes you use a separate dashboard to create new hosting accounts: WHM. With Cloudways you can create multiple servers and sites from a single place, in a few clicks.
File uploading
It’s 2021 and cPanel doesn’t support drag and drop. Do we need to say more?
SSL installation
cPanel requires a plugin and installation is limited to command-line access. Cloudways comes with 1-Click free SSL installation.
File manager and editor
View, edit and move files easily instead of fighting your way through cPanel’s endless buttons and FTP downloads and uploads.
Security comparison
Automated backups
Cloudways’ 1-Click Backup & Restore gives you peace of mind. cPanel offers a $5.95/mo add on for backups.
Dedicated firewalls
All Cloudways servers are protected by OS-level firewalls. With cPanel, you have to pay $12/mo extra for a firewall extension.
DDoS protection
Cloudways helps you protect your websites from attacks by partnering with Malcare. Set it up yourself in cPanel, with some technical skills.
Collaboration comparison
WordPress migration
cPanel makes you create databases and upload files to your new server. Cloudways solves it in a few clicks, with a free plugin.
Staging environments
Takes dozens of steps in cPanel, including creating your own database. Clone servers or individual sites with just 1 click in Cloudways.
Server transfer
Transfer ownership of the servers to your clients, using Cloudways’ 1-Click hosting feature. With cPanel, you better understand DNS, Apache, and databases
Team members
cPanel charges per user account. Cloudways allows you to invite your entire team to work together, at no extra fees.
Projects & teams
cPanel lets you manage multiple domains. Are you managing a lot of websites? Cloudways lets you create Projects to group your apps, and assign them to your teams.
Pricing comparison
Lowest plan
cPanel starts at $15/mo, with a plan suited for hobby websites. Cloudways gives you super-fast hosting at $10/mo, with unlimited websites
Core features
Cloudways includes critical features like free SSL, team management, health monitoring and automated backups on all plans. cPanel offers add ons you need to pay extra for.
Billing management
One account, one billing section, why complicate things? cPanel offers an $18.95/mo extension to have all-in-one billing for your customers.
Customer support
Cloudways offers 24/7/365 Live Chat support, on any plan. cPanel charges a whopping $65/incident fee for customer support.
Site migration
The cPanel team migrates your site to cPanel at no cost. *Conditions apply
Your 1st site migration is absolutely free with a NO BUGS guarantee.
At Cloudways, customer support doesn’t cost extra
Cloudways customer support performance
Q3 2020 – Q1 2021
-
2.1 minutes
Initial response time
-
30 minutes
Average time to solve and close a support inquiry
-
90%
Percentage of support inquiries closed with a happy and satisfied customer
Dedicated Account Manager
Private Slack channel
Phone Support
Your first migration is on us
Considering moving to Cloudways? Our migration team will take care of your 1st site migration — free of charge and with minimal downtime.
No Bugs Guaranteed! Our migration pros work closely with you to make sure your site looks, works and loads as you expect.
“Speed is great and it’s easy to use and manage. It’s also easy to explain to non-techies how to use Cloudways.”
RubĂ©n Castellanos – Online Teaching Platforms
Cloudways Vs cPanel
Frequently Asked Questions
How can I be sure my website will be safe with Cloudways?
At Cloudways, security is our top priority. Rest assured that our staff takes a proactive approach to keeping our servers safe and secure from malicious traffic, malware and attacks.
Keep in mind that the following security features are available on ALL plans:
- Dedicated Firewalls
- Free SSL Certificates
- IP Whitelisting
- SSL encryption
- Regular Security Patching
- Two-Factor Authentication
- Bot Protection
If you have any additional questions or concerns about securing your sites, don’t hesitate to contact the Cloudways customer service team. We’re always happy to help.
Does cPanel support more than just WordPress?
Yes, cPanel is very versatile in that regard. You can install just about any Content Management System on cPanel.
Cloudways also supports more than WordPress hosting. Any website that’s based on a PHP Content Management System such as Drupal, Magento, Laravel, and Joomla, can be hosted on Cloudways.
Is the Cloudways control panel easy to use?
You betcha! If you’re looking for the best cPanel alternative for ease of use, you can’t go wrong with Cloudways. Forget about command lines, using separate control panels for server management and multiple clicks just to do a simple task. The Cloudways interface gives site owners a visual web panel where you can drag and drop to manage your cloud servers and sites.
Is cPanel free?
No, cPanel is not free or open source (common misconception). They allow new users to download test licenses for free, however. But even these test licenses should be installed with caution, because they can’t be uninstalled afterwards. The only way to remove cPanel from your server is to reformat the entire hard drive. Yikes.
But not to worry. There are plenty of great alternatives to cPanel. Cloudways offers a completely free 3-day trial for new users to test out our platform. We even cover the costs of your first site migration to make sure that everything is working smoothly.