KES
USD - International
Three panels, all mature, all capable of running a hosting server. The choice matters more than people expect, because it is hard to undo: migrating accounts between panels is possible but tedious, and your customers will have learned whichever one you picked.
Here is how they actually differ.
cPanel and WHM
What it is good at. Ubiquity. More developers, more documentation, more tutorials and more migration tools target cPanel than the other two combined. If you hand an account to a client, there is a good chance they have seen it before, and if they hire somebody, that person will know it.
What it is not good at. The interface is dense and has grown by accretion. And the pricing: per-account billing means the licence cost rises with the business.
Pick it if you host for other people, or you want the path of least resistance.
→ cPanel shared license from Ksh 980 a month
Plesk
What it is good at. Windows — it is the only serious option if you need IIS, ASP.NET or MS SQL. The interface is the cleanest of the three, and the extension catalogue is good. It runs on more Linux distributions than cPanel does, Ubuntu and Debian included.
What it is not good at. Smaller community than cPanel, so fewer tutorials and fewer people who already know it.
Pick it if Windows is in the picture, or you prefer a modern interface and your clients are not cPanel-trained.
→ Plesk shared license from Ksh 980 a month
DirectAdmin
What it is good at. Being light and fast. It uses noticeably less memory than the other two, which matters on a small VPS, and it does the core jobs — accounts, email, DNS, databases, certificates — without fuss. The licence is the cheapest of the three.
What it is not good at. Recognition. Fewer clients will have seen it, and fewer third-party tools integrate with it.
Pick it if you run your own sites, or your clients do not care which panel it is and you would rather spend the difference elsewhere.
→ DirectAdmin shared license from Ksh 980 a month
Side by side
| cPanel/WHM | Plesk | DirectAdmin | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Best known by | Almost everyone | Windows teams | Administrators |
| Windows support | No | Yes | No |
| Resource use | Heaviest | Middle | Lightest |
| Reseller accounts | WHM | Yes | Yes |
| Shared licence, from | Ksh 980/mo | Ksh 980/mo | Ksh 980/mo |
What about the free panels?
CyberPanel, CWP and Webmin cost nothing and will run a server perfectly well. The trade is support and polish. When something breaks at two in the morning, a forum thread is a different experience from a vendor with an obligation to answer.
For your own sites, free is a reasonable choice. For client sites, the licence is cheap insurance — and as a shared licence, cheaper than most people assume.
The thing that usually decides it
Not features. Licence cost against how many accounts you will run.
If you host for clients, cPanel’s familiarity is worth paying for, and a shared licence removes most of the reason not to. If the server is yours alone, DirectAdmin does the same job for less. If there is Windows anywhere in the stack, the decision is already made.
Whichever you pick, price the licence before you price the server — it is frequently the larger of the two.