cPanel vs Plesk: Is Plesk more secure than cPanel?

Published on: 17/06/2022 | Updated on: September 30, 2026

What is the reality – Is Plesk more secure than cPanel? Once you’ve chosen a hosting solution for your web presence, one of the next steps is choosing the right tool for managing your VPS – a control panel. A control panel is a piece of software that provides tools for configuring your server in a quick and easy way. It allows monitoring and managing resources, managing contents, databases, and mailing, so it is a rather necessary thing you have to think about when setting up your new server.

Today there are numerous control panel options, all with their benefits and drawbacks. Two pretty much popular solutions are cPanel and Plesk. In today’s article, we are going to compare both solutions to help you choose which one suits you best. So, Is Plesk more secure than cPanel? Let’s get the answer.

cPanel vs. Plesk

cPanel is one of the oldest (started in 1996) and most famous control panels available on the market. Plesk is a slightly younger solution (founden in 2001) and enjoys broad popularity as well. Both control panels have convenient graphical user interface and various settings to configure your server as you see fit, but there are several points they differ in, which may be crucial for the needs of some users. Let’s have a look at these points.

Operating system

One of the main differences between the two control panels consists in operating system. cPanel is available exclusively for Linux, whereas Plesk is operating system agnostic, that is it exists both for Linux and Windows Server.

So, cPanel supports the following operating systems:

• CentOS
• CloudLinux
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Amazon Linux

As for plesk, versions for the following operating systems are available:

• Debian
• Ubuntu
• CentOS
• RHELLet’s see how the backup support differs in Plesk vs. cPanel:
• Cloud Linux
• Amazon Linux
• Virtuozzo Linux
• Windows Server 2008 R2 SP

Keep in mind that, if you are going to work with several servers with different operating systems at a time using Plesk, you’ll have to buy a separate version of Plesk for it, that is, you can’t buy it once and run on different operating systems.

Interface

Both control panel offer a transparent and user friendly interface which will be comfortable to work with for the beginners as well. Their interfaces are clean and minimalistic, it’s easy to find the features you need since they are grouped according to their similarity and and custamizable, that is you can remove or add features as you see fit. All in all, both control panel offer rather similar interface solutions, the choice between which can be most likely determined by the matter of taste. It’s worth mentioning, however, that Plesk’s interface is considered slightly lighter for the beginners. Also, if you are going to work with several servers, it might be more convenient if you choose Plesk as it supports more operating systems.

Support

Technical support is an important aspect of the service, as you never know when something may go wrong and whether you’ll be able to resolve the problem on your own.

As for the control panels in question, both of them offer support and on a decent level, but with some small differences.

With Plesk you get free 24/7 support for clients. Otherwise you can always ask something on forums or on social media.

As for cPanel, here you can use tickets to send a support request. There is also a customer service you can call, which works from 6:00 to 18:00 from Monday til Friday, and from 6:00 to 16:00 on Saturdays and Sundays. There is also emergency support service that costs $65 per request.

Security

Security is one of the most crucial parameters that you have to think about when handling your server regardles of what project you undertake, but in particular regarding sites that deal with sensitive data, like e-commerces or similar.

Both Plesk and cPanel have gone so far caring about the security of that customers, that it is again hard to tell which one does its work better.

Let’s just look closer at the features they offer.

Plesk offers numerous free security extensions. It’s also provided with daily security patches and automated healing that will let you solve your problems even without support.

cPanel provides that SSL certificates are installed aumatically, offers extensive encryption of the messages, ability to add separate users or entire countries and regions to the blacklist, multifactor authentification when logging in.

Backup

Backup is an important way of protecting your data since you can never predict a major force situation. To ensure that your data is not lost in case of emergency, cPanel and Plesk offer you efficient way to backup it.

As for cPanel, it offers three types of backup: compressed, uncompressed, and incremental. The compressed backup supposes that your data is stored in compressed form on the drive. The uncompressed backup means that your data is not compressed and occupies more space in storage, but it runs faster.

Incremental backup means that only the changes after the previous backup are stored. To save storage on the drive, hard links are used for it.

What about Plesk, it offers complete and incremental backup. Complete backup supposes that all of your data is saved for backup, whereas incremental backup is just like discussed earlier.

Cost

Both control panels are not free of charge, so you’ll have to put up with expenses in any way. If you aren’t going to deal with a huge amount of websites, Plesk might be less expensive, however.

Conclusion

So, now you have the answer on “Is Plesk more secure than cPanel?. Both control panels do their work good regardles of the aspect we talk about, with small differences that might be important for some users and not important for others. Plesk is often considered easier for newbies and it’s also the option when you work not on a Linux-based operating system. Otherwise both panels are a good choice. If cPanel more attractive for you, go and check out cpanel VPS pricing on Hostzealot. Perhaps that’s exactly what you need. We hope that this article was useful. Thank you for your attention and see you next time!