Today we will discuss DirectAdmin and cPanel. A web hosting control panel is a web-based interface provided by a web hosting service that lets users manage their servers and hosted services.f You should know the best choice between cPanel and DirectAdmin. Both of these are control panels used for hosting and provide administrative options for managing all parts of your hosting account. When it comes to comparison, one of them is definitely better than the other, but before we get there, you need to know what these web control panels have to offer.
What is DirectAdmin?
As a paid control panel that requires a license, DirectAdmin is one of the best choices you’ll find You need a paid control panel (most hosting companies provide one) because free control panels don’t give you the security and features you need for most projects.
It’s one of the simplest control panels to use and provides access to webmail, admin options, your file manager, and more. When you log in, you’ll notice, everything is laid out on one screen for you. This makes it easy to find what you are looking for within the administrative area. Users should have little technical knowledge to use DirectAdmin.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is the best web control panel you will find in the market. This is another paid control panel and most of the best hosting companies offer cPanel with your account. The features and ease of use make it one of the best choices on the internet for both new and advanced users. Newbies will find cPanel very easy to navigate and unlike DirectAdmin, cPanel divides features into categories, making them easy to find. CPanel offers more features and plugins than Direct Admin. The user does not need to have a technical background to use cPanel.
Differences between cPanel and DirectAdmin:
cPanel and DirectAdmin are very similar to web panels, yet they are very different from each other. These two web panels provide a server configuration framework and UI, but Direct Admin leaves quite a bit of work to the root shell and can be said to be more developer-friendly. Whereas, cPanel offers almost all installation and functionality within the UI. This makes it easier to use and a good fit for almost all user levels.
Supported web servers:
DirectAdmin has a variety of web server support.
| DirectAdmin | cPanel |
|---|---|
| Apache | Apache |
| Nginx | Apache + Nginx Reverse Proxy |
| Apache + Nginx Reverse Proxy | |
| LiteSpeed (requires paid license) | LiteSpeed (requires paid license) |
| OpenLitespeed |
Email:
cPanel and DirectAdmin both support the following email features with them:
- Catch all email accounts on the server
- Autoresponder/vacation message
- Mail queue administration interface
- Mass email address/forwarder import feature
- Implementation of quotas
- Apply strong passwords
- Ability to mass email all users
- Automatic cleaning of mailboxes
- One-click webmail login when authenticated via web panel
Both DirectAdmin and cPanel use the same webmail software, so one panel’s email capabilities match the other’s.
