You 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.
Try 3 Days Free3-day free trial — No credit card required
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 GUI like cPanel, a lot has changed in web hosting since 1996 that cPanel hasn’t caught up with yet. That’s why the users look for cPanel alternatives.
cPanel:
- Was designed for devs with tech knowledge
- Makes you pay extra for basic features
- Puts you in charge of maintenance
Users say cPanel’s outdated design makes it hard to use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 The user interface has an outdated design.”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, as a cPanel alternative, 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 |  |
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| Hosting capabilities |
cPanel is not a hosting provider but a control panel software. Cloudways offer its own visual web hosting control panel
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| 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.
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| Server selection |
Choose from 3 top providers, no constraints: Digital Ocean, AWS, and Google Cloud.
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| Ease of use |
Supports Digital Ocean, Linode, Azure, AWS, Amazon Lightsail and Google Cloud, as part of their Hyperscalers plan.
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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.
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| Sites per account |
cPanel limits your accounts to 1, 5 or 30 on their lowest plans. Cloudways gives you unlimited sites on any plan.
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| Popularity |
Being around since 1996, lots of traditional developers stick with cPanel.
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| 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.
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| Ease of use & UI/UX comparison | |
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|---|---|---|
| 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.
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| File uploading |
It’s 2021 and cPanel doesn’t support drag and drop. Do we need to say more?
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| SSL installation |
cPanel requires a plugin and installation is limited to command-line access. Cloudways comes with 1-Click free SSL installation.
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| File manager and editor |
Viw, edit and move files using a visual file manager instead of fighting your way through cPanel’s endless buttons and FTP downloads and uploads.
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| Security comparison | |
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|---|---|---|
| Automated backups |
Cloudways’ 1-Click Backup & Restore gives you peace of mind. cPanel offers a $5.95/mo add on for backups.
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| Dedicated firewalls |
All Cloudways servers are protected by OS-level firewalls. With cPanel, you have to pay $12/mo extra for a firewall extension.
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| DDoS protection |
Cloudways helps you protect your websites from attacks by partnering with Malcare. Set it up yourself in cPanel, with some technical skills.
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| Collaboration comparison | |
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|---|---|---|
| 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.
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| Staging environments |
Takes dozens of steps in cPanel, including creating your own database. Clone servers or individual sites with just 1 click in Cloudways.
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| 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
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| Team members |
cPanel charges per user account. Cloudways allows you to invite your entire team to work together, at no extra fees.
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| 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.
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| Pricing comparison | |
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|---|---|---|
| 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
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| Customer support |
Cloudways offers 24/7/365 Live Chat support, on any plan. cPanel charges a whopping $65/incident fee for customer support.
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| Server selection |
The cPanel team migrates your site to cPanel at no cost. *Conditions apply.
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Your 1st site migration is absolutely free with a NO BUGS guarantee.
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At Cloudways, customer support doesn’t cost extra
Cloudways customer support performance
Q3 2020 – Q1 2021
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2.1 minutes
Initial response time
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30 minutes
Average time to solve and close a support inquiry
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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.”
Rubén 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 neither free, nor there are free cPanel alternatives as such (a common misconception). They allow new users to download test licenses for free, however. But even these test licenses should be installed cautiously because they can’t be uninstalled afterward. 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 best cPanel alternatives. Cloudways offers a free 3-day trial for new users to test our platform. We even cover the costs of your first site migration to ensure everything is working smoothly.
What kind of web hosting services do I get with cloudways?
Cloudways is more geared toward managed hosting with powerful features and services to help you manage your website. Whereas, cPanel is more focused on providing a control panel for managing your web hosting account.
As a cPanel competitor, Cloudways lets you host websites on cloud infrastructures like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, DigitalOcean, and more. When you host your website with Cloudways, you get access to features such as managed security, automatic backups, and one-click staging environments, among others.
Is it easy to migrate to Cloudways?
It is easy to migrate from cPanel to Cloudways. You can use the Cloudways Migrator Plugin for WordPress. If you have a website other than WordPress, then you can use the Cloudways Free Migration Service. Besides, you can chat with the experts and request them for the migration.
Overall, the process of migrating to Cloudways from cPanel should be relatively straightforward. Although it can take some time depending on the size and complexity of your website. If you run into any issues, Cloudways provides 24/7 customer support to help you through the process.
