Which is the best Control Panel?

[carl]

Which Control Panel will you prefer the most for your web Hosting ?

1) cPanel
2) Hsphere
3) Helm
4) Plesk
5) Ensim
6) DirectAdmin
7) Interworx
8) Hosting Accelerator
9) InsPanel
10) CWIPanel

We are using cPanel from 2 years now. Using it,you have your own packages, name servers and brand.According to me cPanel is the best.

Please express your Views with good Qualities which is attracting you to use the control panel of your choice .

[bod-jack]

I like Cpanel because it is a cheap hosting control panel for linux webhosts and managed dedicated servers.

[jazz]

The most well known and reliable web hosts that offer some of the cheapest web hosting plans powered by cPanel control panel, they are probably the best web site hosting cPanel support services.

[james]

As I am using windows I like Plesk.It is the best control panel.

[sam]

You can also use Helm for Windows .It has built in billing system which Allows hosts to automatically bill their customers in any currency for the services they use with multiple payment options including credit card, PayPal, cheque and bank transfer.

[Keith]

I like Plesk because it can be used with both Linux and Windows Web hosting servers.Plesk is a alone Control Panel which gives a little more advantage over cPanel. It's interface looks much like Windows XP. You have all the colors and big icons that you would always need. I have to give them credit, because it does look awesome. They have all the basic features that cPanel has as well.

[Christina]

I am using Hosting Accelator due to it's simple interface, you can easily delegate control to website administrators and users.

[BOD - Brandon]

cPanel is really great, simple and easy to learn. You have a lot of good options in it.

[Sean]

Yes I agree with you Brandon,

cPanel is a cheap hosting control panel for linux webhosts and managed dedicated servers.

[carl]

cPanel provides you with following features:

1. Ease of use / administer
2. Lighter control panel
3. features
4. Fantastico softwares integrated (free by majority of the hosts)

[Rodricks]

As compare to other control panel cPanel is very easy to use.

[bod-jack]

CWIPanel is windows based control panel it provides the following features:

IIS 5.0 and IIS 6.0
MSFTP
BulletProof FTP
Serv-U
Gene6 FTP Server
MailEnable Mail Server
Imail Mail Server
MS DNS
Simple DNS Plus
MS SQL 2000 OR MS SQL 7 OR MySQL
Awstats
Webalizer
ASP.NET 1.1 or 1.0

It also Support Deepmetrix Livestats, Icewarp Merak Mail Server, VOPMail Mail Server.

[Sean]

Has anyone used that control panel before ?

[RichardM]

Personally, I don't think there's a whole lot of difference between control panels. Some are prettier than others, but they all do pretty much the same things. I use cPanel mainly because I started with cPanel, and it's more convenient to stick to the same control panel, especially when running multiple servers / VPS's.

I will say, however, that cPanel's ubiquity is an advantage when changing hosts or shuffling accounts between servers. I use Linux servers, and finding a host that will provide cPanel is, well, effortless. In fact, it's hard to find a Linux hosting company that won't install cPanel, even if their default panel is something else. cPanel is everywhere in Linux hosting.

So why does this matter? Well, the truth is that we can use pretty much any control panel (or none at all) for ordinary server operations. Software installations, updates, editing DNS settings, file transfers, and so forth can all be done via SSH, which is often faster than clicking around through multiple levels of icons. (But then again, when I started using computers, there was no such thing as a GUI, anyway.)

But take a situation like the one I recently had, when my previous hosting just became altogether unreliable. Moving to another host that used the same control panel made my life a lot easier because I could package and transfer the accounts with a few clicks, rather than manually creating tarballs, SCPing them via SSH, checksumming them, creating home directories, extracting the tarballs, creating DNS entries, and so on, and so on. There are few things easier in I.T. than moving accounts from one cPanel server to another.

That's not to say that other panels don't have the same ability, because most of them do. But like I said, practically everyone in Linux hosting offers cPanel as one of the options, so using it widened my selection and made the move generally easier.

Richard

[Sean]

cPanel has easier interface when compared to any other hosting control panel which is why it is most preferred. Also, their regular updates for a reasonable price are worth the deal. WindowsOS is a different situation. cPanel doesn't support it.

Plesk is equally good, however there are some bits and pieces which should be studied on further and i believe may one days it will prove its points much better.

So cPanel is what i will have...

[aliya]

Can anybody explain me if there is a better system for a Linux Dedicated system. The cPanel squirrel and Horde are not that much impressive. Free or not any suggestions would be great.

[RichardM]

You don't have to change the panel on a dedicated server (or VPS) just to add a webmail client. You can install whatever software you like.

But the software you install outside of cPanel usually won't automatically update with the stuff cPanel installs by default, so you'll have to manually check for updates (or set up a cron job to fetch the updates).

There are tons of open-source webmail apps. You can find a bunch of them at

http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_...ords=web mail

There are also commercial ones, which may (or may not) be better supported.

Of course, whenever installing software, make sure to consider stability, resource use, security, and so forth before making your decision.

Frankly, I don't think there's much difference between webmail clients, and so few of my clients use it that I don't bother installing anything special unless they ask (and pay) for it. It's also possible to customize either Horde or Squirrel Mail to some extent if you want to spend the time. But if a pretty or more full-functioned webmail client is important to you, there are other options available.

Best,

Richard

[aliya]

Thanks Richard for this helpful suggestion.

[RichardM]

For what it's worth, a friend of mine who's been a server admin since he was 14 (seriously) swears by RoundCube. It's a beta, but he says it's stable.

Richard

[carl owen]

Basically selecting a control panel depends on your requirements. If you have used a control panel before and it is available with the package you are looking at then you should choose the same control panel as it will always prove a good decision. But if the control panel is not available then you should have some suggestions from someone who is experienced in this particular thing. I have used Plesk and cPanel control panel and believe me they are simply great. If you are choosing Windows then I would suggest you to go with Plesk and if you have Linux then cPanel is always better as it is more compatible with Linux. You can have Plesk for Linux as well but Plesk is more compatible with Windows. So the choice is your's. Best of Luck. May you choose the best.