SiteGround unveils their New Control Panel (no more cpanel)

bigredseo

bigredseo

HD Community Advisor
Staff member
Well, one of the biggies took the plunge and released their own control panel for their clients.

Currently, the control panel is for their own system. There are no immediate plans to release it to other companies at this time.

The new control panel center has been rolled out for NEW accounts signing up with SiteGround. Users who had previously signed up and currently using cPanel will be swapped over to the new system shortly.

As I had discussed with Artashes in another thread about control panels, they did exactly what I would have done. They narrowed down the buttons to just a handful of options (filemanger, email, database, backups, security/speed) and left off a lot of the fluff. While you can manage most of the daily operating items from their control panel, extended items such as modifying DNS records, MX and things of that nature would be taken care of by their support staff.

This is really what needed to be done as a whole. 40+ icons that nobody uses in cPanel is useless. YES, there are a few of us that would use many of the buttons during setup, but after that, there's really only 5 items you'd ever clicks.

I'm planning to do a YouTube video walkthrough of their control panel, so when I get that completed I'll post a link here for those interested.
 
Looking forward to that YouTube video walkthrough, very valuable to see what it's like.
 
It's slick.

They say (SiteGround) that this has been in progress for over 3 years and is just over 2.5 million lines of code using various programming languages.

I'm recording videos here today so we can provide the overview to clients and then a breakdown on different areas as our clients always ask us for steps when creating email, uploading files, transfers or other tasks.

Will post the overview video here once I've completed it.
 
As promised, here's that video for the control panel. I had all sorts of issues with YouTube today not wanting to accept the upload (or saying the video was unavailable).

Have a look and see my take on the new Control Panel and Dashboard at SiteGround - https://youtu.be/VGXLyD7RmcE
 
bigredseo said:
As promised, here's that video for the control panel. I had all sorts of issues with YouTube today not wanting to accept the upload (or saying the video was unavailable).

Have a look and see my take on the new Control Panel and Dashboard at SiteGround - https://youtu.be/VGXLyD7RmcE
Click to expand...

Good Job SiteGround! I can see the efforts they have put on this Control Panel.

Thank You @bigredseo for this overview.
 
Just had the chance to view the video. Love what SiteGround has done. Light, just the right and most common functionality up front.

Thanks for that video walkthrough, Conor.
 
bigredseo said:
Well, one of the biggies took the plunge and released their own control panel for their clients.

Currently, the control panel is for their own system. There are no immediate plans to release it to other companies at this time.

The new control panel center has been rolled out for NEW accounts signing up with SiteGround. Users who had previously signed up and currently using cPanel will be swapped over to the new system shortly.

As I had discussed with Artashes in another thread about control panels, they did exactly what I would have done. They narrowed down the buttons to just a handful of options (filemanger, email, database, backups, security/speed) and left off a lot of the fluff. While you can manage most of the daily operating items from their control panel, extended items such as modifying DNS records, MX and things of that nature would be taken care of by their support staff.

This is really what needed to be done as a whole. 40+ icons that nobody uses in cPanel is useless. YES, there are a few of us that would use many of the buttons during setup, but after that, there's really only 5 items you'd ever clicks.

I'm planning to do a YouTube video walkthrough of their control panel, so when I get that completed I'll post a link here for those interested.
Click to expand...

This is good. We need more options in this industry that we can choose from. If I had the time I think I would download one of the open source solutions and develop it further myself to use on my own network.
 
This is the first of the Bigger Guys to leave cPanel, but it won't be the last. I'm wondering whether cPanel regrets its decision. Only time will tell.
 
SiteCanyon said:
Good Job SiteGround! I can see the efforts they have put on this Control Panel.

Thank You @bigredseo for this overview.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this video. Anything new won't be as developed as cPanel, but it looks like SiteGround has done a tremendous job. One of the downsides as you present is clients cannot do their own site backups and would have to pay siteground to do them for them. I don't know if they give you SSH access, if they do you can do them via command. But if you don't have SSH access then you have no choice as a hosting customer.

I do like the fact they have chosen to take the time and develop their own control panel, in fact I really like it because cPanel is trying to monopolize the market. And anyone who does that will not be a company I use on my own network.

If I may offer more helpful insight, I see that the hosting costs SiteGround offers are what my lowest prices were when I used cPanel. I am actually setting up new servers with CWP. We have not used it in production yet, but as I am crunching the numbers my prices would be lower. I know that SiteGround is a good company and has a staff they have to pay. I have even used some of their web designs. But in a hosting situation even though I really like the fact they have developed their own control panel, we are also faced with server costs and other things as we migrate to SSH.

Good luck in what you do and what you bring to this forum. I recognize it as valuable.
 
Thanks for checking out the video!

SSH is possible on their new control panel, it's under the DEV section (most people would never use this area), but for developers, it's there if you want/need it.

You can still make a backup of the files via FileManager and a backup of the Database via phpMyAdmin, but there's no "central" backup unless you pay them for it. So things like email etc wouldn't get backed up unless you're paying for it.

As far as the pricing is concerned, the Web Hosting world has been a race to the bottom for too long. Even when I first started web hosting back in the mid-90's, we offered pricing in the $6 range with larger plans in the $14, $24 and $34 range.

When I sold my old company, we were still in those same price brackets, but we offered a service far superior to that of many of the large companies. Each of the staff knew their way around PHP and HTML and could not only troubleshoot normal server and mail issues, but they could provide assistance to clients having problems getting a page to display right, a layout needing tweaked, etc etc. All of that was "included" in our service. Good luck trying to get that from any of the big guys!!

If I was to launch web hosting again, my STARTING pricing would be $75/month. I actually did put a base outline on pricing and services together a year or so ago, but have chosen not to go back into the field.

Yes, the pricing is much higher, but the target client would also be much different. Essentially it's what some of the bigger guys like FlyWheel, WP Engine, Kinsta, etc have done. They raised the price, but raised the expectation on service too. And to be honest, I have no problem paying my Kinsta bill each month and not having to think about a server issue ;)
 
GlowHost-Sales said:
Are there set-up fees? If so, what are they – and are they waived for first-time subscribers?
Click to expand...
With regards to Siteground? There are no setup fees. They will also assist with a site move if requested. If you're using WordPress, they have a plugin that will do the move for you too.
 
No harder than cpanel to someone else. Just access file manager, backup the public_html folder, then access phpmyadmin and export the database. Provide both of those to the new host (or upload yourself) and you're done.

It's the same method a user would use if they had cPanel (since users can't restore Backup files in cPanel - only hosts - and I never trust a host to actually check they did things right ;) )
 
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