cPanel is cheaper than DirectAdmin. Specifically in my case.

[Jayjayuk]

Personally for me its not about the $$ per say. Even though I am a rather small host on a tight budget. Cpanel use to be good, but about 2 years before they got bought out. The company was definitely changing for the worse. Updates would break more then they would fix. Then they were pushing out auto updates the were breaking things. I was already looking at alternatives. Then the sale out and price increase. Which was for me just the straw that broke the camels back. I find Direct Admin easier to use and more secure. It also runs faster on a server. My only complaint is they really need to get a better Backup system in. Ironically though unless cpanel fixed it the one on cpanel is even worse.

I actually like and prefer the DA backup.

I am also using Acronis with it as well now.

 

[BillyS]

I was a CPanel customer for ten years. I moved to DA for a couple of reason, but quite frankly money was not the reason. My big complaint about CPanel is how fast they roll out new technology. I think they are past it now, but they told us to move from MySQL to Mariadb then it took them so long to move off 10.3, they skipped 10.4 and went right to 10.5 (only recently). The version of phpmyadmin they deploy was quite old. Versions of php and such were always months (if not a year or more) behind what was deemed a stable version.

On the plus side, service was GREAT. They are extremely responsive and will go beyond what they have to do when troubleshooting. Their backup system is also very flexible (something DA should consider), like being able to backup to AWS.

What intrigued me about DA was the integration of server options such as openlitespeed and Redis. I also liked how progressive they are in terms of rolling out new versions of software - like php 8.0 and 8.1. Admittedly, we do give up speed for some stability. I'm glad with my choice.

 

[Richard G]

I actually like and prefer the DA backup.

Since they change it, it became better so you can make backups also with dates and so. But it might be nice to have a package option where you can allow the user to create external backups (or not). However I don't know how much of a security risk that is.
I know hosters who do have such option.

My big complaint about CPanel is how fast they roll out new technology.

Not with everything unfortunately. I know for a fact that DA had mod_ruid2 running already as an option when this was still just put in as a beta with CP.
And we ourselves were running that already for several years on our servers even before it became a custombuild option.

Service is indeed GREAT. Can't put anything up against that, sure thing. You have an issue, you can create a ticket, no extra costs, they come have a look at your server and look if they can fix it for you. But oke, that's also what you pay for. If it's more expensive you can expect some more.
Another GREAT thing I'm missing with DA, is the easy option CP has to move servers (one, multiple or even all accounts and configurations), which takes a load of work of your hands configuring stuff when you have to setup a new server.
Still administering one CP server for a friend.

It's not all bad, it's choices. And it got bad (pricewise) after they were taken over. DA uses much less resources, is very customer friendly (especially with prices changes, which are 0 in a very long time) and easy to use. It takes some administering sometimes, but hey... if one is a hoster, one should learn to be an admin anyway and know what's going on under the hood.

 

[BillyS]

My big complaint about CPanel is how fast they roll out new technology. I think they are past it now, but they told us to move from MySQL to Mariadb then it took them so long to move off 10.3, they skipped 10.4 and went right to 10.5 (only recently).

Not with everything unfortunately. I know for a fact that DA had mod_ruid2 running already as an option when this was still just put in as a beta with CP.
And we ourselves were running that already for several years on our servers even before it became a custombuild option.

My comment and the example I give was actually a criticism of CPanel, they are very slow to roll out new technology.

 

[Pacific Spirit]

Gotta say, that’s a lot of risk with all those Wordpress plugins in 1 account.

If 1 site goes down you can kiss goodbye to the others.

I hope you use some good malware protection and WAF rules as well.

To be honest for an extra $15 you would do yourself a favour by moving to DA, separating out each of the sites, adding the resource limit to each one with Jailshell.

But it’s up to you.

Well the backup from cPanel to DirectAdmin is diffecult, anyway, it is possible to do it via ssh and then restore the backup called on the username with "cpmove" but even then is it fail mostly. I decide to not doing the backups from cPanel to the DirectAdmin anymore to prevent dissapointment from my customers. What they mostly do is making a DA backup and then I can restore them easy, so worst is it not really.