If you’re ever signed up for shared hosting, it’s likely you’ve encountered Softaculous. This commercial auto-installer script, integrated into many hosting control panels (like cPanel, DirectAdmin, and Plesk), lets users deploy hundreds of web apps, such as WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, etc.
But in 2025, is Softaculous still essential… or is it becoming obsolete?
The Rise of Softaculous
Softaculous rose to prominence in the 2010s by solving a major pain point: making it easy for non-technical users to install popular web apps without needing to touch FTP, databases, or config files. For a shared hosting customer who wanted to spin up a blog or forum, this was highly advantageous.
Consider what’s needed to setup WordPress:
- Download the WordPress distribution tarfile
- Extract it
- Transfer the files to your cPanel or whatever account
- Make sure all the permissions are correct
- Create the database
- Grant database permissions
- Run the installer
- Tweak wp-config.php
That’s a lot to expect from someone who just wants to setup a brochure site for their business. Just learning Linux permissions for a non-technical person could be an evening’s investment.
With Softaculous, you just pick WordPress from the menu, click click click, and everything is setup.
As a DIY guy, I sometimes took exception to the way Softaculous set things up, but for 99% of people, it was a “just works” setup.
What’s Changed Since Then?
Here’s what’s shifted in the last decade:
Managed Platforms Have Taken Over: Many small website owners have moved to managed WordPress hosts, SaaS website builders (like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify), or cloud-native services like Netlify and Vercel. These platforms remove the need for a “one-click installer” because they handle everything for you.
WordPress Has Grown: On shared hosts, the #1 app by a mile is WordPress. Many hosts now offer their own custom WordPress managers and updaters, given that such a huge percentage of their users are going to want it. If all you need is WordPress and your provider has a one-off app to set it up for you, why do you need Softaculous?
For Advanced Users, Options Abound: For developers and more advanced users, cloud platforms like DigitalOcean, Vultr, and Hetzner offer prebuilt app images, or you can deploy directly via containers, Terraform, or scripts. Softaculous has little relevance here. In the modern developer stack, tools like Docker, Kubernetes, GitHub Actions, and CI/CD pipelines are the norm. If you’re running a modern app, you’re probably not using Softaculous to deploy it.
Softaculous Isn’t Completely Dead
Legacy shared hosting customers still use Softaculous. For LowEnd providers who don’t have the resources to develop their infrastructure beyond typical recipes, dropping Softaculous in can solve the “one click app” need for customers.
Softaculous supports hundreds of apps beyond WordPress — including some niche or less common ones. If you want to quickly test something like Dolibarr or Matomo, Softaculous is still the easiest route.
Still, in the long run, will Softaculous survive? For modern developers, it’s irrelevant, and for the great bulk of the shared hosting market – people who want to plop WordPress on cPanel – it’s increasingly so. It’ll soldier on, no doubt, but it’s not the must-have it was in the early 2000s.
What do you think? Do you still use Softaculous? If you’re a provider, do you consider it an essential part of your toolkit? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below!
Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.
As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.
Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.
His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.
You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.
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