Web Development

Evaluating the best cPanel hosting plans for small to medium-sized businesses

By Sean, on August 7, 2024 - 3 min read

Of cPanel’s four hosting tiers, three are suitable for small to medium-sized businesses: the cPanel Solo, the Admin plan, and the Pro plan. The Solo plan supports one account and costs $17.49 a month as of July 2024. It is suitable for a small business, a freelancer, or anyone who needs a single hosting account. 

Solo

Under this license, you can upgrade from shared hosting to a single-account cloud or VPS hosting solution. Its price makes it appealing to new or returning users of cPanel. However, the license offers more limited functionality compared to what you would get with a standard one. It also requires at least the 66.0.25 version of cPanel & WHM. 

The Admin plan 

This plan covers up to five accounts and costs $29.99 monthly. It was created for small to medium-sized businesses and agencies, web designers, and application developers who only need a few accounts.

It offers full access to cPanel, which makes it easy to manage domains, sites, databases, email accounts, and more. 

The Pro plan 

The Pro plan can accommodate as many as 30 accounts. At $42.99 a month, it’s affordable for growing mid-level businesses and allows them to scale as needed. The cPanel Pro supports Python and node.js applications. It offers high-speed SSD storage and an impressive uptime of 99.9%. The plan ensures security through SSL certificates, regular backups, and a state-of-the-art firewall.

cpanel file management panel

Cloud and VPS are the best hosting environments for cPanel 

The three plans described are only available in cloud or VPS hosting environments. What makes cloud and VPS the best types of cPanel hosting?  

cPanel cloud hosting combines the user-friendly interface of cPanel with the flexibility and scalability of cloud hosting. Resources such as CPU, RAM, and storage can be automatically adjusted to ensure a website runs smoothly during traffic spikes. You can upgrade or downgrade resources based on your needs without downtime.

In 2024, around 79% of organizations say they intend to increase their cybersecurity budgets, but most of them don’t expect to do so by more than 15%. In light of these unimpressive security measures, you’d be happy to know cloud hosting providers store data in multiple locations, making recovery straightforward in case of failure. Services can be quickly restored from backups.

When it comes to selecting a recovery system, the highest priorities for businesses are speed of recovery, cloud backup, and intuitiveness, with 65%, 62%, and 45%.

Cloud hosting providers often have data centers across the globe. You can choose a location close to your audience for better performance.

Finally, cloud hosting plans use content delivery networks to cache content and deliver it quickly to users globally.

cPanel VPS hosting comes with full root access. It enables users to install custom software, configure server settings, and manage server resources. They can set up custom applications or modify server-level settings.

Dedicated resources and better performance translate to faster website load times, improving user experience and SEO rankings.

Finally, VPS hosting plans give users full control over server settings. They can adjust them to optimize performance and ensure their websites meet the best search engine practices.

FAQ

How common is cPanel? 

4.3% of all websites with known web panels use cPanel as of July 2024. cPanel is used by 6.5% of all the websites with known panels that rank in the top one million. It is still a distant second to Plesk, which is used by 89.1% of all the websites with known panels, corresponding to 4.5% of all websites. cPanel is more popular than known alternatives like ZesleCP and GridPane. 

What should you consider when picking a hosting company?

The first thing to consider is the average uptime, or what percentage of the time your site is online. Other essential factors include support, load time, pricing, bandwidth, storage, and SSL for security.

Sean