# cPanel

7 Hacker News commenters recommended cPanel and 19 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Lets people set up domains, TLS and email in minutes through a click-button interface, with a long record of no known bugs. Critics point to serious security vulnerabilities.

## Why people recommend it

- Easy domain, TLS and email setup (2 comments): "there aren't that many ways for a normie to create their own (sub)domain with TLS and an email in under five minutes" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48077835)) "an amazing little bit of software with all of the click a button to setup" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48077743))
- Long track record without known bugs (2 comments): "cPanel is just about as far away from “unproven” as possible." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972258)) "I didn't hear of any bugs in the last 14 years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46030637))

## What people warn about

- Serious security flaws and large attack surface (7 comments): "Anyone who has ever seen cPanel's software engineering abilities (ie any of the source) should not be surprised by this" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47977792)) "cpanel itself -- the admin of everything provided for that domain by the hosting provider -- it's a huge surface area." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970376)) "this vulnerability affects - and we cannot stress this enough - all currently supported versions of cPanel & WHM" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47970733))
- Bloated, dated and hard to use (4 comments): "their largely unnecessary complications (except enterprise maybe)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47972739)) "GSuite is much easier to set up than CPanel." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48078426)) "good riddance to that bloated slug cPanel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973222))
- Aging codebase with few maintainers (2 comments): "Probably the grayest of the gray beards. Perhaps not enough Perl Wizards left to maintain it nowadays." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48081978)) "30 years isn't really a good thing, here." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47973174))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Cockpit](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cockpit.md): 49 recommend
- [Webmin](https://hackerapproved.com/p/webmin.md): 5 recommend

## Where to get it

- [Visit the official site](https://www.cpanel.net/)

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "cPanel", https://hackerapproved.com/p/cpanel/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).