Comparison
NovaPanel vs cPanel
cPanel still works. It's been the default since 1996 and it'll be around for another decade. But the reasons people stayed — "everyone knows it", "the integrations exist" — get weaker every year as the licence cost climbs and the UI ages.
Here's where NovaPanel beats it, where it ties, and where cPanel is still the right answer.
| NovaPanel | cPanel | Edge | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Per-server license cost | Free Community / £4.99/mo Pro | $23-50/mo per server | NovaPanel |
| Pricing model | Flat per-server subscription | Tiered by user count + reseller licence | NovaPanel |
| Self-hosted (full control) | Yes | Yes | Tie |
| Reseller / multi-customer support | Yes (built in) | Yes (extra licence tier) | Tie |
| Dual UI (admin + customer) | Yes — separate ports + theming | WHM + cPanel | Tie |
| Auto-TLS | Caddy — every domain, instantly | AutoSSL (manual config) | NovaPanel |
| Modern stack | Go binary, Caddy, Postgres | Perl + Apache (Cloud Linux fork) | NovaPanel |
| Default reverse proxy | Caddy 2 | Apache + nginx wrapper | NovaPanel |
| PostgreSQL support | First-class | Limited / addon | NovaPanel |
| DNSSEC | PowerDNS (toggle in admin) | Manual / paid | NovaPanel |
| WAF | Built-in (Pro) | ModSecurity (config-heavy) | NovaPanel |
| S3 / Backblaze backups | Built-in (Pro) | Manual config | NovaPanel |
| Mature ecosystem | New — fewer 3rd-party plugins | 20+ years of tooling, integrations | cPanel (still) |
| Migration tools (cPanel → us) | Roadmap, not yet | (N/A — origin) | cPanel (still) |
| Branded white-label | Yes (Pro) | Yes (extra cost) | Tie |
Where NovaPanel wins
Cost. cPanel's per-account pricing model means a server with 100 customer accounts can cost $50+/mo just for the panel. NovaPanel is flat per-server: £4.99 a month and you're done. That's a £50/yr versus £600/yr decision once you're on a real-sized box.
Modern stack. NovaPanel is a single Go binary with Caddy as the reverse proxy — auto-TLS for every domain instantly, no AutoSSL config dance. cPanel is Perl + Apache, with TLS that requires you to think. Day-one operations are noticeably less fiddly.
Sane upgrade path. NovaPanel updates ship as a new binary fetched from our CDN, signed and SHA-verified. cPanel updates have historically broken things. Our updater is one click; theirs is "schedule a maintenance window."
Where cPanel still wins (honestly)
Ecosystem. 20+ years of plugins, integrations, hosting-marketplace presence. If you need that one specific WHMCS module or your billing system was built around cPanel API quirks, switching cost is real.
Migration tooling. cPanel → cPanel transfers are scriptable. Migrating away from cPanel to anything else is manual today. We're working on a migration importer (read the changelog — it'll show up there) but it's not shipped yet. If you have hundreds of accounts, this matters.
Familiarity. Your customers and staff might have learned cPanel a decade ago. NovaPanel's UI is cleaner (we think), but cleaner-but-different beats same-as-always for some users.
Realistic switch math
For a single VPS with under 100 customer accounts and no third-party billing-system entanglements, NovaPanel saves roughly £500/year per server over cPanel and gets you a noticeably nicer UI. For larger fleets with deep cPanel integration, wait for our migration tooling — it's the headline feature on the roadmap.
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