When it comes to hosting a website, performance is usually the first thing that everyone looks for. You want to find a web hosting provider that delivers strong uptime rates, high speeds, and enough resources to run your website.
While performance is obviously crucial, lots of webmasters forget to consider managing their hosting plan after they sign up.
Your current hosting provider may offer strong performance, but if it’s too complicated to manage your account, then you should look for a cPanel web host.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is one of the most popular control panels in the web hosting industry. The interface and dashboard make it easy for webmasters to manage things like domain names, backups, email addresses, files, account preferences, and more.
In my experience, once you’ve used cPanel, there is really no looking back. I’ve experimented with other dashboards, but cPanel is the best for beginners and experts alike.
One of the reasons why cPanel is so popular is because it’s a web-based control panel, meaning you can manage your website from anywhere with an Internet connection, as opposed to needing software on a specific piece of hardware.
Anyone with a website can benefit from cPanel hosting.
Whether you’re looking for a shared hosting plan, virtual private server (VPS hosting), or dedicated server, a user-friendly hosting interface will make your life much easier.
cPanel Web Hosting Reviews
Lots of web hosting providers have cPanel hosting. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you should pick just any host offering this feature. There are other factors that need to be taken into consideration.
Rather than spending time digging through dozens and dozens of hosting trials to try and find the best web hosting provider for your website, you can just refer to this guide to learn the best cPanel web host.
These are the top cPanel web hosting providers:
I’ve already done the research for you. All you need to do is determine which option below best fits the description for your cPanel hosting needs.
Bluehost
I ranked Bluehost as the best overall hosting provider for its user experience. So it should be no surprise that they rank high on my list of cPanel web hosts.
More than two million websites across the globe rely on Bluehost, so you know that this is a provider that you can trust.
- Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.95 per month
- VPS Hosting — Starting at $18.99 per month
- Dedicated Hosting — Starting at $79.99 per month
Bluehost lets you manage access control from your cPanel dashboard. This allows you to restrict access to certain areas of your hosting account, which is ideal for those of you who will have multiple users logging in. For example, as a small business owner, you may not want to give your blogger access to your billing account or server resources.
For those of you who are looking for a VPS plan or dedicated server, you’ll have root access from cPanel as well. This will give you complete control over your server to make any custom changes, without needing any additional software or hardware.
Dedicated plans allow you to increase storage on-demand from cPanel as well. You’ll be able to do this without any assistance from a server administrator.
All Bluehost plans come with a free SSL certificate, 24-7 customer support, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.
HostGator
HostGator is one of the most popular names in web hosting. They offer affordable plans and deliver quality performance.
No matter what type of web hosting service you’re looking for, HostGator has a plan for you.
- Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.75 per month
- VPS Hosting — Starting at $29.99 per month
- WordPress Hosting — Starting at $5.95 per month
- Dedicated Servers — Starting at $118.99 per month
Altogether, this provider has 12 different web hosting plans to choose from; all of which come with cPanel.
With HostGator, you’ll always get the latest version of cPanel with your hosting plan. HostGator also provides some additional incentives like:
- Free website builder
- Free site transfer
- Free domain transfer
- Google Ads credits
- Bing Ads credits
- Free SSL
All shared hosting plans come with a 99.9% uptime promise and a 45-day money-back guarantee. Hostgator is compatible with the most popular CMS platforms including WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Magento.
HostGator is one of the best web hosting providers for websites that need to scale their resources. Having access to cPanel for managing all of this makes everything easier.
InMotion
As a business owner, InMotion should be one of your top considerations for hosting your small business website.
cPanel comes standard for managing your Linux-based server, regardless of which plan you choose. This makes it easy for you to set up your domains, manage resources, handle site automation, and more.
Furthermore, InMotion allows for one-click app installations with more than 400 applications that can be managed directly in cPanel.
Whether you’re using WordPress, Drupal, or other CMS systems and shopping carts, InMotion is an ideal solution for your website. The one-click installer also allows for easy upgrades, convenient maintenance, as well as rollbacks to previous versions.
Here’s a look at the introductory pricing rates for InMotion web hosting:
- Shared Business Hosting — Starting at $6.39 per month
- WordPress Hosting — Starting at $6.99 per month
- VPS Hosting — Starting at $21.04 per month
- Dedicated Servers — Starting at $105.69 per month
All of these plans come with cPanel for free.
In addition to the one-click app installer, you’ll also benefit from data backups, free SSD drives, SSH access, secure email, and other great freebies.
InMotion has been using cPanel with their hosting plans for more than a decade. This has allowed their IT team to customize the backend specs to speed up its responsiveness and ultimately allow for a more seamless user experience.
InMotion hosting plans are backed by a 90-day money-back guarantee, which is an industry-leading offer. So if you’re looking for a reliable web host with a feature-rich cPanel, look no further than InMotion.
SiteGround
SiteGround is another well-known hosting provider that uses cPanel. These are some of the top cPanel features for SiteGround:
- Install your CMS (like WordPress)
- Backup your website content
- Make changes to the server
- Set up your email accounts
- Manage domains
- Manage your security features
- Manage your databases
- View and manage your resources
Managing files through cPanel is something else that SiteGround makes extremely easy for webmasters. All you have to do is upload files and add new folders to keep everything neat and organized. This will ultimately make things easier for you whenever your site needs maintenance.
For advanced users, you’ll be able to manage complex settings, like “Chron Jobs” in cPanel as well. This allows you to run specific commands to optimize your disk space.
SiteGround has shared hosting plans starting at just $3.95 per month. They also offer cloud web hosting, which starts at $80 per month.
Regardless of which option you choose, you’ll be able to manage everything with ease through the platform’s responsive interface and dashboard.
For those of you who plan on using SiteGround for web hosting, I’d recommend checking out my SiteGround cPanel tutorial to help you get started.
iPage
With introductory plan rates starting as low as $1.99 per month, iPage is one of the best cheap web hosting providers on the market today.
For such a low price, iPage comes with a surprising amount of benefits like unlimited disk space, scalable bandwidth, unlimited domains, and a free SSL certificate. They also offer a free domain for the first year after you sign up.
In addition to web hosting, iPage is known for its website builder. But the free version that comes with the shared hosting plan is only good for building six pages, so it’s not realistic for you to create an entire website with it.
iPage uses, cPanel, but there is one catch—you need to sign up for one of their VPS hosting plans or dedicated servers in order to get it.
Those start at $19.99 per month and $119.99 per month, respectively.
Unfortunately, the shared plans do not come with cPanel. Instead, iPage uses something called vDeck Control Panel as an alternative.
vDeck is fine, but it definitely lacking compared to cPanel in terms of its capabilities and interface. Learning how to use it is a bit more challenging as well.
With that said, the iPage VPS plans are very cost-effective compared to other providers out there. So it won’t cost you too much for an upgrade to get cPanel included with your hosting.
A2 Hosting
A2 Hosting isn’t the most well-known name in the web hosting world, but this provider offers the fastest speeds on the market today.
Speed, reliability, green hosting, and excellent customer support make A2 a top option for anyone. They also have a wide range of hosting plans and prices.
- Shared Hosting — Starting at $2.96 per month
- VPS Hosting — Starting at $5.00 per month
- Reseller Hosting — Starting at $9.80 per month
- Dedicated Hosting — Starting at $99.59 per month
All of the A2 plans come with cPanel for free. If you recall, iPage’s cheapest plans don’t with cPanel. So being able to get cPanel from A2 for less than $1 more per month is a great deal.
With A2 Hosting, cPanel allows you to do things like:
- Manage email usage
- Configure SSH keys
- Create a Node.js app
- Install an SSL certificate from a third party
- Manage your files
- Manage databases
- Manage domains
A2 also uses Softaculous, which is made for installing software to your account with just one click. Softaculous and all auto-updates can be handled directly from your cPanel dashboard.
How to Find the Best cPanel Web Host For You
As you can see, every cPanel web hosting provider is unique. Whether it be the price, type of hosting, or other features, some hosts will be a better option depending on the needs of your website.
When you’re evaluating a cPanel web hosting provider, there are elements that need to be taken into consideration.
Performance metrics like uptime and speed are a given. So rather than focusing on those, I’ve identified some other factors that you should look out for when evaluating prospective web hosts.
Free cPanel License
First and foremost, if you want to use cPanel then you need to find a provider that offers a free cPanel license. There are plenty of hosts out there that offer cPanel for an upcharge, but there’s no reason to do go with them if you can get it for free elsewhere.
With the exception of the iPage shared hosting plan, every provider on our list offers cPanel for free.
One-Click App Installations
A major cPanel benefit is its user-friendly dashboard. So for those of you who plan to install third-party apps, it will be easy for you to manage everything in one place.
Look for a web hosting provider that advertises one-click app installs. In my experience, this is much easier than complex downloads and installations. Whether it be CMS integration, ecommerce functionality, or anything else, a simple app installation will make your life much easier. Once installed, cPanel usually will allow for one-click or auto-updates as well.
Site Builder Tools
This shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, but it’s a nice feature for those of you who are building a new website from scratch. If your web hosting provider has an adequate site builder, you can essentially benefit from a one-stop-shop for your website needs.
Normally, I would not recommend bundling a hosting provider and website builder. I think it’s best to stick with providers that specialize in web hosting and platforms that specialize in website builders. Usually, there isn’t any overlap between the two.
With that said, if you’re just building a simple website like a small personal site or blog, then you can get away with this for sure.
Freebies
Price always needs to be taken into consideration when you’re looking at different web hosting options. Some hosts appear cheap, but then upcharge you for basic features. So it’s in your best interest to identify the features you need and then look for a host that offers them for free.
- SSL certificate
- Site migrations
- Domain name
- Advertising credits
- Developer tools
- WordPress installation
These are some common freebies offered by hosting providers. I’d also keep on eye on their money-back guarantees. 30 days seems to be the industry standard. But I’ve seen 45 days, 60 days, and even as high as 90 days.
Resources
It doesn’t make sense to choose a cPanel hosting plan that doesn’t accommodate the needs of your website. While cPanel is a great tool, it doesn’t make up for poor performance.
- RAM
- Storage
- Bandwidth
- CPUs
You need to make sure that these types of resources accommodate your website traffic. For new or growing sites, it’s in your best interest to find a cPanel hosting provider that gives you the opportunity to scale.
With all of this in mind, here is a recap of the best cPanel web hosts on our list.
- Bluehost — Best cPanel for ease of use.
- HostGator — Best cPanel for scaling resources on-demand.
- InMotion — Best cPanel hosting for small businesses.
- SiteGround — Best cPanel for cloud hosting.
- iPage — Best cheap cPanel hosting (for VPS plans).
- A2 Hosting — Fastest cPanel web hosting.
There is something for everyone in this guide. So you can choose the hosting provider that best describes what you’re looking for.
Alternatives to cPanel Hosting
Not every web hosting provider offers cPanel, so you’re not forced to use it.
In most cases, people think cPanel is easier to use. While I agree with that statement, it all comes down to personal preference.
For example, earlier we talked about iPage’s hosting plans. For less than $2 per month, you can sign up for shared hosting, a free website builder, and plenty of other freebies. But this comes with vDeck Control Panel. So if you prioritize price over convenience, you might decide to go with this option instead.
Alternatively, DreamHost is popular web host on the market today. But instead of using cPanel, they have their own custom control panel. I know plenty of webmasters who love it.
Hostinger is another great hosting provider that does not offer cPanel. Even so, I would still strongly recommend them.
So don’t let cPanel availability be the determining factor in your web hosting decision. While I personally think it’s a great feature, you can still explore alternative solutions.
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