Review: cPanel WHM iPhone App

cPanel is one of the most common hosting control panels on the web.

The software is ideal for beginners and intermediate users and is often used along WHM.

However, the interfaces don’t work well on a smartphone.

Now, there’s an unofficial cPanel and WHM app for the iPhone.

[Note: This article was originally posted in March 2010 and may now be out of date.]

First Impressions

Developed by Ollie Kett, the app is available in three versions: cPanel ($4), cPanel Lite (a limited, free version) and cPanel WHM ($5).

At the time of writing this review, the cPanel app has a 2-stars rating in the App Store. cPanel WHM has a 2.5-star rating.

The extra features in cPanel WHM include the ability to manage accounts, edit packages, view server load, view bandwidth usage, reboot the server and restart services. We’ll focus on this version for now.

Why We Like the cPanel WHM App

The app works as advertised. It’s also quick, even when not connected to wifi. It allowed us to quickly rectify problems on the move and can be configured to work with multiple accounts.

The cPanel functionality is quite limited, though, and the app failed to impress on a few other counts.

Problems With the cPanel WHM App

This is an app with more than its fair share of bugs. Often, it crashed on opening, or crashed when saving something to the server.

There were also numerous problems with the features.

• Add An Account constantly produces an unknown error.
• Adding a package does not work- though it says it has worked, it doesn’t seem to.
• We can view or suspend accounts and packages, but not edit them.
• IP address can’t be changed.
• Backups can’t be restored or managed.
• There’s no control over DNS or the services on the server itself.

The app is also arguably quite inefficient; the iPhone’s keypads could be better used.

Is it Worth Buying?

Sadly, the limited functionality in this app makes it a poor investment. We would recommend waiting for a new version or an alternative app.