If you’re shopping around for a hosting plan, chances are you’re used to seeing cPanel advertised as the control panel software of choice. There are a couple of reasons for this, and a couple of reasons why it’s worth your while to consider choosing HostGator and cPanel for your hosting needs.
To start with, cPanel is open source and Linux based. This means that it doesn’t cost anything to use, and the open source community regularly creates new addons and themes for it that help make it even better. Anything that a site owner could possibly need cPanel to do has probably been taken into account already, and built into the software. If you’re leaning toward a Linux based hosting plan, then chances are cPanel is probably going to end up being your control panel software.
Linux based hosting plans don’t come with the extra licensing fees that Windows based ones do, which is part of the reason why they’re favored by hosting providers and site owners alike. Since Linux based hosting, and by extension cPanel, is so popular, most of the web’s best applications have been created and tried out using cPanel. If you’re looking to create a site powered by WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or any other open source content development platform, you’re probably going to want to go with cPanel as your control panel- it’ll ensure that whatever application or addon you decide to use is going to work the way it should, and you’ll get far fewer headaches during the installation process.
Next, cPanel makes it easy to install applications with one click. If you’re new to something like Drupal, and want to be able to use it without having to put yourself through a whole manual installation process, then cPanel can help you out. By filling out a simple form with some information about where and how you’d like the application set up on your account, you can have your applications up and running in about four and a half minutes. This works for everything from blogging software like WordPress, to content development platforms like Joomla, to galleries like Gallery, to shopping cart utilities like Agora.
Lastly, cPanel is pretty flexible when it comes to customization and user friendliness. There are a couple different themes that can be applied to cPanel, so you can get it to look just the way you want to. Other control panels don’t offer these kind of options, which can end up giving them a steeper learning curve when it comes to making yourself comfortable with using them.
HostGator offers cPanel with many of their hosting plans by default, including their shared plans and reseller hosting. This helps make their hosting plans easy to use, cost effective, and versatile for a wide range of clients. No matter whether you’re a web developer looking to create the next big content management platform, a hosting reseller, or a small site owner with a blog, cPanel and HostGator can accommodate you.