On managed hosting, the hosting company chooses the panel, and for a typical website cPanel, Plesk and Enhance do the same things: email addresses, databases, files, the SSL certificate, DNS, the PHP version, backups. What differs is how the tools are arranged and what sits behind them. The choice between them only becomes real when you have your own VPS server and buy the license yourself: that's when the operating system, how many websites you have and which panel you already work with start to matter.
In short
- For your website's visitors, the panel doesn't matter. They see the website, not the panel.
- cPanel: the best known on shared hosting, Linux only. You start from the tool, then choose the domain.
- Plesk: runs on Linux and Windows. You start from the website or domain.
- Enhance: a newer panel, designed for multiple linked servers. You start from the website. It's the panel behind NBT Host hosting.
- When choosing hosting, backups, resources, support and the renewal price count for more than the panel's name.
What a hosting panel does
A control panel is the interface you use to manage your hosting without terminal commands and without asking for help with every small thing. Any serious panel gives you:
- email addresses, with forwarding and a spam filter;
- MySQL databases and their users;
- a file manager and FTP accounts;
- automatically issued SSL certificates;
- the domain's DNS zone;
- the PHP version and its settings;
- scheduled tasks (cron);
- backups and restores;
- WordPress installation.
The differences between panels lie mostly in how these tools are arranged and in what the server administrator can do behind the scenes.
cPanel
cPanel is the panel many people who've had a website in recent years grew up with. On shared hosting, it was for a long time almost the standard.
- How it works: one long page of icons for the whole account. You open the tool, for example “Email Accounts”, then choose the domain.
- Operating system: Linux only.
- Two levels: cPanel is the user's panel; WHM is the panel for the server administrator and for resellers.
- License: paid by the hosting company or, on a VPS, by you. With cPanel, the license price depends on the number of accounts on the server.
Plesk
Plesk is the other very widely used commercial panel.
- How it works: you start from the website or domain and find its tools grouped on the same page.
- Operating system: Linux and Windows. On Windows, Plesk manages the IIS web server and ASP.NET websites, which cPanel doesn't do.
- WordPress: it has a dedicated toolkit for installs, updates and staging copies.
If you're interested in the Windows side, we've written separately about Windows or Linux hosting.
Enhance
Enhance is a newer panel, built from the start for hosting across multiple linked servers: one server can hold the websites, another the databases, another email or backups, and the panel sees them all as a single place. Websites run isolated from one another.
- How it works: you start from the website, then choose the tool from the tabs: “Files”, “Databases”, “Domains”, “Backups”, “Developer tools” and the rest.
- Operating system: Linux. On a new server, Enhance requires a clean install of Ubuntu 24.04.
- Moving from cPanel: Enhance can import a full cPanel account backup, with files, databases and email. The steps are in the guide importing a cPanel account.
At NBT Host, all hosting plans — web, WordPress, cloud and Bulk — use Enhance. A tour of the panel is in the Enhance panel at a glance.
The comparison, in a table
| cPanel | Plesk | Enhance | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Server operating system | Linux | Linux or Windows | Linux (Ubuntu) |
| Where you start | From the tool | From the website | From the website |
| Multiple servers under one panel | No: each server has its own panel | No: each server has its own panel | Yes, by design |
| Reseller hosting | Through WHM | Yes | Yes, with client organizations |
| Imports cPanel accounts | — | Yes, with the migration tool | Yes |
The table describes general features, not every license edition. Before you buy a license for your server, check what your chosen edition includes in the vendor's documentation.
Does the panel matter when you choose hosting?
Less than it seems. All three can be learned in a few days, and for what you usually do — a new address, a database, a backup — the steps are similar. What you really notice after a year of hosting is something else:
- whether there's a daily backup and how easily you can restore;
- the plan's real resources, not just the disk space;
- who answers you, and how quickly, when something isn't working;
- what the renewal costs, not just the first year.
We went through them one by one in how to choose hosting for a website.
If you're coming from cPanel
In Enhance you'll find the same tools, just arranged differently. The difference in habit is the order: in cPanel you open the tool and choose the domain; in Enhance you choose the website and then the tool. The guide Enhance instead of cPanel has a table with every cPanel tool and where to find it in Enhance.
And if your website is currently in a cPanel account with another company, we'll move it for you free of charge at the start of your contract, with the files, databases and email addresses, messages included. The conditions are on the free migration page.
When you buy the license yourself: on a VPS
A VPS server doesn't come with a panel. You have root access and install whatever you want. If you still want a panel to host websites on it, at NBT Host you can add one to your order as a paid option:
| VPS license | Per month | Per year |
|---|---|---|
| Enhance | €15 | €180 |
| Plesk | €24 | €288 |
| cPanel | €43 | €516 |
You choose one panel per server, and installing and managing it remain your job. A few simple rules:
- You need Windows for ASP.NET applications on .NET Framework: Windows Server is a separate option, with no hosting panel included.
- Your clients only know cPanel and you don't want to get them used to something else: cPanel.
- You have many websites and want to grow across multiple servers: Enhance.
- You run applications, not websites (n8n, Docker, bots, databases): you usually don't need a hosting panel at all.
If you don't want to manage the server yourself, managed hosting that already runs Enhance, such as cloud hosting, gives you the same panel without the server worries.
Frequently asked questions
Does NBT Host hosting come with cPanel?
No. Our hosting plans use Enhance. The tools are the same as in cPanel: email, File Manager, encrypted FTP, MySQL databases, the DNS zone, SSL, the PHP version, cron and backups.
Can I move a cPanel account to Enhance?
Yes. Enhance imports the full cPanel account backup, and we can also do the move for you, free of charge, under the conditions on the free migration page.
Do I get SSH access on Enhance hosting?
No, not on the hosting plans. You work from the panel, over encrypted FTP and from the WordPress manager. If you need root access, you need a VPS.
Can I change the panel on a VPS later?
Changing the panel usually means a clean server and moving your websites onto it. That's why it's worth choosing from the start, using the criteria above.
Which panel is easiest for a beginner?
For everyday tasks, any of them. What matters more is having step-by-step guides for the panel you use: for Enhance, they're in the guides section.