softaculous vs fantastico

For WordPress users, beginners or advanced, they love the easy installation of WordPress, which may be completed from the hosting control panel, such as cPanel offered by Arvixe.

I had been enjoying the great web application installation services from Fantastico until I found Softaculous also available from the ControlPanel.

With Arvixe Hosting service, you can find both Softaculous and Fantastico are listed side by side in the "Software/Services" section:

softaculous fantastico side by side

softaculous fantastico side by side

Both Fantastico and Softaculous are great in offering quick installation of popular software (web application) with simple steps (Fantastico makes the installation into 3 steps while Softaculous requires only one, thus few clicks.): blog, cms, shopping carts (online stores), ERP, and educational Software. Both of them create the needed database and install the software automatically for you. However, it seems that with 200 auto installation scripts (premium license that Arvixe bought), Softaculous, the new comer, is winning more users. According to a Cpanel user forum poll, over 85% of users prefer Softaculous over Fantastico.

One of their users said

Softaculous is good forWHMCS and Magento users as well as hosting provider becasue both scripts are present in Softaculous and easy to install as compared to manual installation.

The e-commerce web applications from Fantastico only include three: "CubeCart, OS Commerce, and Zencart" while with the premium Softaculous that Arvixe hosting offer, you have 13 choices, including the above three and OpenCart, PrestaShop, phpShop, Magento, WHMCS, CubeCart, AccountLab Plus, PHP Point Of Sale, TheHostingTool, TomatoCart. (Even the free version of Softaculous has 10 more scripts than the paid version of Fantastico, which has only 50 scripts.)

For WordPress users,  the installation of WordPress offered by Softaculous are so up to date: see our WordPress news on WordPress 3.1.3. It makes Fantastico's WordPress installation a bit outdated. One good thing about Softaculous WordPress Installation is that it offers you different language versions of WordPress, which is not found with Fantastico.

It seems that it takes a lot more efforts for Fantastico to catch up with Softaculous. Otherwise, Fantastico may lose more and more market to Softaculous.

I was frustrated a few times when the installation is missing for some popular Web application by the Fantastico auto installer. Way to go, Softaculous!

2 Commentsto softaculous vs fantastico

  1. […] was released on May 25th, and on May 31, when I tried to have a new installation of WordPress with Softaculous ( free service offered with Arvixe Hosting ), WordPress version 3.1.3 was already available! […]

  2. […] been designing for our clients can update without breaking the code and the sites. Also we love Softaculous Auto Update, which can update WordPress and send us an email notice: “Your site has updated […]

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