cPanel is lazy hosting

I’ve worked with a lot of web hosts over the years. And there’s one kind I really don’t like: the ones that throw their customers into cPanel.

It came up again this week because I was helping a client with a project on HostArmada. Their panel experience is basically cPanel. And I’ll be honest… it was a slog. I can get around cPanel, it’s just really annoying. It’s cluttered, it’s old looking, and it hasn’t changed much since it came out in the late ’90s.

Here’s the thing is about cPanel: it isn’t a custom platform. It’s a software package. A host buys a license, installs it, and drops you into it to manage your hosting yourself. You can technically do everything in there, but a lot of it means nothing to the average customer. It just makes hosting look way more complicated than it needs to be.

To me, cPanel is a sign of lazy hosting. It tells me the host isn’t investing in the user experience. And that’s true even when the host is technically solid. I’ll give HostArmada some credit, too… the site was slow at first, but it turned out to be a configuration issue, and their support was on it fast. Probably a perfectly fine host. I just don’t like the cPanel part.

Go with hosts that build a custom panel, like Kinsta or Rocket.net. It’s easier, it’s less overwhelming, and it says something about how much they value the customer. If a host hands you cPanel, that’s your answer about their priorities… whether you choose to listen or not.