What is cPanel and how does it relate to WHM

Your website is the beating heart of your business. Whether or not your enterprise operates partly or exclusively through facilitating eCommerce transactions, in the digital age your website’s health and wellbeing are inextricably tied to the fate of your business. For many new prospects, your website is their first taste of your business and brand and it’s vital that you make the perfect first impression. But before you start thinking of web design, development, copy, UI, and UX, you must consider the foundation for your website — the control panel.
Here we’ll look at the most commonly used hosting control panel,  cPanel, to understand how it provides a solid foundation for your website. We will explore cPanel’s symbiotic relationship with Web Host Manager (WHM) and learn the differences between the two, as well as how they work together. The better you understand this relationship, the easier you’ll find it to manage your website and ensure robust performance…
What is cPanel?
Think of cPanel as the control panel for your website. It enables you to manage all of your website’s major functions while also managing different accounts sharing one dedicated server.

•     Upload and manage files for your website
•     Edit individual files and webpages
•     Setup and manage email accounts for your domain
•     Manage email settings and security features (e.g SPAM protection)
•     Setup and manage databases
•     Install your choice of Content Management System using an installer like Softaculous.
•     Add and remove addon domains or subdomains
•     Edit DNS records for your domains
•     Check website statistics and gather analytics data
•     Manage your backups.

As you can see cPanel gives you access to all the basic features you need to build and manage your website effectively.
What is WHM?
Web Host Manager is the backend control panel for managing a server and one or more websites managed by cPanel. WHM provides an interface for basic system administration needs of a server, access to various metrics and logs, control over various functions and services needed to host websites, and most notably, it compartmentalizes each website controlled by a cPanel account into its own environment. This allows WHM to be used as a reseller control panel allowing for the isolation and management any resold accounts (albeit with somewhat restricted rights compared to dedicated servers or a VPS).
WHM allows you to:

•     Create and manage individual cPanel accounts
•     Create custom hosting packages built around the user’s needs
•     Manage features of the hosting packages
•     Manage which versions of PHP, Apache, and other vital services are available to each cPanel account
•     Set up private nameservers and modify DNS zone records for domains and subdomain
•     Perform maintenance on basic systems and control panels
•     Set resource limits to protect cPanel accounts from each other
•     Access resold accounts at will without the need to enter login details

So… What’s the difference? – A comparison
As you can see, cPanel and WHM are two sides of the same coin. Both are integral to effective website management. Think of cPanel as managing the front end and WHM as managing the back end —  you cannot have one without the other.
If you have VPS Hosting or a Dedicated server through GigeNET or another hosting provider, you can add cPanel with WHM access to your service package.  If the level of management involved with WHM is of a concern, we offer a variety of management plans to assist you and our support staff are all certified for cPanel and WHM management.