DirectAdmin vs cPanel: Which is Right for You?
As you might already know, we’ve transitioned from cPanel to DirectAdmin as our control panel for our Web Hosting products. While the interface will look slightly different, all the usual settings you know are still available. The DirectAdmin vs cPanel debaters will have their differences, but control panel accessibility is something they’ll undoubtedly agree on.
We’ll be highlighting more of the DirectAdmin features and differences. This is to help you become accustomed to it and navigate your control panel with ease.
What is DirectAdmin?
DirectAdmin is a website hosting control panel. It’s designed to be user-friendly, streamlining boring tasks and making website control a lot more fluid.
DirectAdmin also makes it easy to manage everything from users and domains, to emails, all from one place. It offers support for various scripts and also allows you to manage scripting features across your website.
What is cPanel?
cPanel is another popular web hosting control panel, known for its user-friendly interface and robust security features.
You can expect a range of tools primed for web hosting, from file and email management, to database administration and security.
With extensive documentation and a wide range of plugins up its sleeve, cPanel’s got you covered, whether you’re an absolute beginner or an experienced pro.
Brush up on your knowledge in this super simple guide.
DirectAdmin vs cPanel: Interface Differences
Now that you’ve had a quick introduction to both DirectAdmin and cPanel, let’s pit them head-to-head. We’ll only be focusing on the user interface and feature availability.
One thing to note is that the cPanel control panel tends to have similar settings grouped under one theme, but the specific features are separate.
The DirectAdmin approach groups the settings under one theme, but keeps related features together. This makes the DirectAdmin control panel look a lot less cluttered. We’ll go over each theme section by cPanel’s naming convention, and then show you where DirectAdmin differs.
Load-in Interface
The DirectAdmin load-in screen is a lot friendlier, right off the bat. The small icons and setting names make it a lot easier to find what you’re looking for.
If you prefer less icons and more settings, you can change the look and feel in the Skin Options settings. You can find this feature in your username dropdown on the top-right side of your screen.
Here’s an alternative skin that’s actually the standard.
Similar to cPanel, if you need to find anything you can easily enter it into the search bar at the top of the screen. Some of the naming conventions might be slightly different, but the same settings are still available. For example:
- Domains vs Domain setup
- SSL vs SSL/TLS & SSL/TLS Status
- Databases vs Manage My Databases.
Let’s go over the email section next, since it’s one of the most visited settings for most users.
Same Settings
These are some of the settings that are available to both DirectAdmin and cPanel.
- Email Accounts
- Forwarders
- Autoresponders
- Spam Filters
- Mailing Lists
Different Settings
Email Routing: Instead of this setting, we have access to the MX Records in DirectAdmin. It allows you to set or update the server that’ll be sending/receiving your emails. For most people, these settings won’t need to change.
Default Address: You can find this feature under E-mail Accounts in DirectAdmin.
Track Delivery and Email Deliverability: These two features are combined into E-mail Tracking in DirectAdmin. This makes it a lot easier to find and troubleshoot any problems you may have sending or receiving emails.
Address Importer: To find this feature, look in the IMAPSync Migrations setting. While the name could certainly be a bit more user friendly, it gets the job done in terms of importing and exporting your emails.
Global Filters and Email Filters: These two features don’t immediately appear in DirectAdmin. Instead, you’d set these from your webmail or email application.
BoxTrapper: This is an additional SPAM Filter application. It’s been replaced in DirectAdmin with the more advanced Apache SpamAssassin.
Calendars: DirectAdmin doesn’t have a calendar feature. On the face of it, it might look discouraging, but realistically most users aren’t using their control panel for this. Users (us included) tend to use an email client/application of our choice. Webmail does have a contacts feature built in, however.
Encryption: Since this is tied to mailing, it also didn’t make the cut for necessary control panel features. You can find it in your Webmail or email application.
Email Disk Usage: You can find this feature under Email Accounts in DirectAdmin.
Next up, let’s take a look at the Files section.
Files
This section doesn’t have as many settings as in cPanel as most of them have been moved or become a part of another setting.
Same Settings
As you’d expect, both cPanel and DirectAdmin have the setting below. As for the Files section, that’s about all they have in common.
- File Manager
Different Settings
Like we said, some settings have been moved around in DirectAdmin.
Directory Privacy: You can find this tool under the Advanced Features section. It had a name change as well, going by Password protected Directories.
Disk Usage: This is now available in the Site Summary sidebar section. Usually, it’ll be on the right-hand side of your screen under the Usage stats.
FTP Accounts: This was moved to the Account Manager section and got renamed FTP Management.
Backup tools: All the backup-related features are under Advanced Features in DirectAdmin. The exception is Acronis, which is under the Extra Features section.
Small Note on FTP Accounts
A small note to keep in mind about your FTP settings in DirectAdmin is that it’s not immediately clear how to access it. The app itself isn’t technically available in either control panel.
cPanel gives you the full details, along with a downloadable config file, but with DirectAdmin you need to do a tiny amount of work to access it.
Your FTP hostname will be your domain name prefixed by ftp. So, it should read something like ftp.yourdomainname.com. Your user name and password will be the same as your DirectAdmin login credentials. If you prefer to set up FTP only accounts, you’ll be able to do so from the FTP Accounts section.
Not in DirectAdmin
These are some of the Files settings not in DirectAdmin.
Images: This feature in cPanel allowed you to do batch conversions. Realistically, however, most people never used it. From our experience users tended to use an image specific application for this type of task. Similar to the calendar.
Web Disk: in cPanel, this feature allows you to access your files on the web server as if they were a part of your local machine. In essence, very similar to creating an FTP account.
Git Version Control: DirectAdmin doesn’t have any Git version control features at the time of writing.
Databases
DirectAdmin doesn’t have a Databases section. Instead, you’ll find phpMyAdmin under the Extra Features section. The other three database options are combined into one Databases tool under the Account Manager section.
Overall, the functionally stays the same. We might even say it’s a bit easier with DirectAdmin since it sets your user for you while you’re creating the database.
Domains
Different Settings
WP Toolkit: This setting is under the Softaculous section in DirectAdmin and has all the same functionality. The only difference is that it’s called WordPress.
Redirects: You’ll find this setting under the Account Manager section with the name Site Redirection.
Domains: The same domain-related features are also under the Account Manager section. They’re bundled into DNS Management.
Not in DirectAdmin
Site Publisher: This feature is specific to cPanel. In DirectAdmin, however, you’ll have access to Site Builder, which is under Extra Features.
Metrics
DirectAdmin doesn’t have a specific section for Metrics, but that doesn’t mean they’ve neglected these features. Some of them are found in other sections.
Different Settings
Resource Usage: You can find this setting under the Extra Features section with the same name. We’re classing it as different since DirectAdmin doesn’t have a section for metrics specifically.
All other stats: All the other stats, metrics, and error logs are under the Site Summary / Statistics / Logs tool. You’ll find this collection of information in the System Info & Files section.
While DirectAdmin demands a couple more clicks to find what you’re looking for, the interface is a lot less cluttered than its control panel counterpart.
Security
Security is another section that doesn’t exist in DirectAdmin. Instead, these features can be found in different sections.
Different Settings
All SSL features: All the SSL features are in the SSL Certificates setting under the Account Management section.
Hotlink Protection: In DirectAdmin, this feature is also found in the Account Management section. The major difference being that it’s called Hotlinks Protection (with an ‘s’).
Not in DirectAdmin
The IP Blocker and Manage API Tokens settings are not in DirectAdmin.
You’ll find all the necessary and additional security features under the Advanced Features section. Most of these are similar to the settings in cPanel.
Software
As with many of the other settings, these are grouped into other features to limit clutter and create a cleaner interface.
Same Settings
Softaculous Apps Installer: Both DirectAdmin and cPanel has a setting for this with an additional section for easy access to the most popular apps and scripts.
Different Settings
PHP Version, Node.js, Python: All of these can be found under the Extra Features section. You can find an additional PHP Settings feature under Account Manager.
SSH Access: This setting is under the System Info and Files section renamed to Terminal.
Advanced
Most of these features appear in the Advanced Features section of DirectAdmin. The notable exceptions are Track DNS, Indexes, and LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager. If you opt for our LiteSpeed Hosting, LiteSpeed Web Cache Manager will become available to you.
For a deeper dive into LiteSpeed, NginX, and Apache, check out our blog comparing them to one another.
Preferences
Based on how the settings have been divvied up, it should come as no surprise to you that DirectAdmin doesn’t have a Preferences section.
Of course, you’ll be able to find all of these settings under your username at the top-right of your screen. The most notable difference is that DirectAdmin doesn’t allow you to create additional users. Instead, it has a different, safer solution.
What you can do is create temporary login keys for users. This makes your control panel a lot safer, but is also a tad more inconvenient. For some users, particularly those running businesses, control panel access should definitely be limited. So, this seems like a small price to pay for a massive return on security.
Sidebar
Staying on theme, DirectAdmin’s sidebar shows only the most pressing information. Accessing the rest requires you to head to Resource Usage or Site Summary / Statistics / Log. For users who like to have their website information close at hand, this can come as a bit of an inconvenience. It does, however, come with the benefit of a sleek, comfortable aesthetic.
Two statistics not available on DirectAdmin are the server IP and last logged on IP, which were nice to have, but not at all imperative.
Conclusion
Everything that you need to get your site online is available in DirectAdmin. It’s definitely come a long way since launch, and is a lot more usable and user friendly than it was before.
Overall cPanel does offer a bit more features, which comes with a bigger price. Although, a fair question to consider whether these additional features truly add value for the user. Most of us will primarily be using around 10 or 12 settings regularly. While extra features are nice to have, if they’re unused they might as well be seen as ornaments.
If you’re new to navigating DirectAdmin, give it some time and you’ll become accustomed quicker than you think. We’ve created a feature table to help you quickly see what settings are shared or unavailable in the respective control panels.
