Looking for feedback from people who EITHER
use or HAVE used Hosting Controller.

Anyone have any feedback from their customers
on HC versus other CPs, or in general? Do people
like it, find it easy to use, etc ...??

From an admin point of view, does it interact with
Imail and/or Merak (the two mail servers we use)
to your satisfaction?

How is their customer support?

Do you know if there are skins that have been
developed for this CP that can be purchased ...
either from HC or from a 3rd party? I didn't find
that the interface was all that nice, though the
feature list does look quite good.

Any other comments/feedback on their software
would be greatly welcomed and appreciated.

We used HC for about 2 years. It was ok but to be honest the only reason we used it for so long was because of the lack of any other Windows control panel.

We now use the Helm system which looks great. I don't think there is much in it feature wise, there is a couple of things HC has that Helm doesn't and visa versa. However Helm looks and works much better.

We never had a complaint about HC support, they were always quick and very helpful, as are the Helm support team.

Helm is a much better control panel if you are looking to grow onto multiple servers. Helm is bases on one system and can distribute sites to multiple servers, HC is based on the webserver and can only install new sites on to that server so you need a HC install on every webserver you run. This can also cause problems if you have resellers.

We use merak which works with Helm and HC. With HC your users will get access to the Merak web based consol, with Helm your users manage the emails through Helm and get no access to the Merak web based consol. I like the fact that every thing is done via Helm with regards to setting up email. With HC your users have seem where else to log into. Having said that the Merak consol enables the user to use all the Merak features available which Helm at this time does not.

My advice is if your budget can stretch to it go with Helm, much better looking and easier to use. When we switched to Helm from HC our customers loved it, they were a bit fed up HC as it is quite confusing. Our customers pleaded with us not to change the control panel again because they love Helm that much. To us that says it all.

Kind Regards

Just droped HC, couldn't get around the billing and credit system, so dumped it and when for Command Matrix

My understanding after talking to the HC people was that
it was almost 100% customizable ... from the Interface to
what features you want to use/offer, including billling and
things like that.

That is one of the big reasons we are so interested in it,
as it essentially provides us with the opportunity to build
a semi-custom control panel based on an existing framework,
something that none of the other CPs seem to be able to
offer.

We looked at Command Matrix ... after not hearing back
from their sales team for about 2 week, we decided that
it might be better to go with a company who is dedicated
to their business. Command Matrix is definately the nicest
looking CP on the market though (in terms of visual apperance),
one of the primary reasons we were initially interested in
it. However ... that said, support/sales must always come
first IMHO ... no matter how nice the software might look.
Also, we didn't like the fact that their CP is VERY rigid in that
you have to use their mail server, their software, etc ...
I know they claim that they are working to correct that,
but by the time they do ... cPanel will probably be out with
their Windows CP ;)

We use Hosting Controller, Allot of our reseller do like the fact that they can customize almost everything from the parking pages, invoices, defaults emails, add there logo to the control panel and more.

It uses ASP so you can access the source code and make changes to the menu and controls if you like.

We enjoy the complete product that Hosting Controller offers our resellers.

Do your end users (or the end users of your resellers) also like the product?

We don't really work all that much with resellers, and probably
will not be changing that for the next few months until we have
100% rolled out our complete service offerings.

We have had no complaints as of yet, Only praise.

We don’t ever talk to the resellers customers so I don’t get much feedback from them, The only feedback is from the Resellers since we only sell reseller hosting. A lot of resellers tell us they like the built in billing manager and how anonymous you and keep the services by customizing the control panel and auto signup.

I don’t know if its changed since but I used to use H-Spear and stopped using it because I noticed it did not hide the host in the DNS records of the resellers NS servers. When I was using H-Spear it added CNAMES that pointed to the host, this was very easy to find out who is the host. I may have been using an older version, But it was explained to me at the time that this is how they create the reseller dns servers.

With HC it’s creates unbranded DNS records so there is no mention of the host in the records or in the resellers name servers.

Originally posted by Nevidia
Do your end users (or the end users of your resellers) also like the product?

We don't really work all that much with resellers, and probably
will not be changing that for the next few months until we have
100% rolled out our complete service offerings.

Our end users did not like HC, the ones that did like HC changed their minds when we gave them something better, ie Helm. If its all you know then you will be happy with it, if you have tried the alternative then you will realise what you have been missing and your customers will thank you for it.

Regards

Was there a general or a few reasons why they didn't
like HC vs. Helm?

When I tested out the two systems, I found that I didn't
like the way that HC looked in compared to Helm, but I
didn't particularily like the way that Helm looked etiher.

What I liked about HC was that we could then customize
the interface to match our helpdesk, webmail, etc ... so
that we can present a seamless front to our clients that
will match what we want to portray.

If, however, you found that HC was buggy ... missing
a lot of features, etc ... that's a different story alltogether.

Thanks for the advice/input so far.

One thing that I did not like about Helm, and it has nothing to do with the control panel is that on Helm’s website you see nothing about support, They don’t have any public support forums or anything.

HC has a support form where people can flame and ask questions and request features I like this a lot since our resellers make requests to HC for features and HC will add them to the next Service packs if other people also request the same feature. The service packs seem to come out every 1-3 month’s so your users get upgrades all the time.

They just released a new version on Monday, I have yet to install it but they are talking about in the next release to redo the entire layout of the control panel.

Yes, I know that when I spoke to them they said
that they were planning on (or were already working
on) adding in some more preset skins to the CP.

They also said they were planning on adding in
multi-server support within the next three months.

Firstly I think it is great that I have seen quite a lot of posts complimenting HC. Over the past few months they have had some competition which they never seemed to have had but still appear to be doing ok.

If, however, you found that HC was buggy ... missing

Yes HC was always buggy. It wasn't missing any features really apart from multi server support. When We asked about this they said they had no plans to build multi server support into the control panel.


HC has a support form where people can flame and ask questions and request features I like this a lot since our resellers make requests to HC for features and HC will add them to the next Service packs if other people also request the same feature. The service packs seem to come out every 1-3 month’s so your users get upgrades all the time.

Helm releases service packs every 2-3 months too. With bug fixes and new features. They have great plans for new features which come out all the time in updates.

They also said they were planning on adding in multi-server support within the next three months.

That would be a massive step for HC which would change the whole config and set up of the system. This would be more like a new version rather than a service pack and if they are adding this within the next 3 months then they should be bragging about it. The problem with HC was/is they say they are going to release something then it gets released months later. Take V2 for example, they scheduled it for release January 2002, it was released in about August (If I remember correctly)


One thing that I did not like about Helm, and it has nothing to do with the control panel is that on Helm’s website you see nothing about support, They don’t have any public support forums or anything.

Check out http://www.webhostautomation.com/forum
This is linked to from there main site. You have to register for the forum in order to see it all.

Also you can call helm on the telephone and they answer it and help you out. HC have never answered their phone when I called them. They also have a members area with ticket system, update downloads and pages to suggest new features for users to vote on.

What I liked about HC was that we could then customize the interface to match our helpdesk, webmail, etc ... so that we can present a seamless front to our clients that will match what we want to portray.

What can be done now to customise HC? Sounds like they have changed these options since we used it.

With Helm you can add customised HTML headers and footers and also add custom links to the nav bar, which is great to link your forum, Ticket System, web mail etc.

Regards

I just emailed HC about the Multi IIS server support.

As I'm sure you guys already know they support remote mail,sql and dns servers. They even support remote Linux dns and mail so I don’t think adding the support for remote IIS servers will be that big of a project for them, Lets see what they have to say.

When I spoke with HC, they told me that essentially the entire front-end of the system is built in ASP. For us, that works better since we are more familiar with ASP than with PHP.

As far as they were concerned, they seemed perfectly happy
to let us use their control panel as a foundation to build our
own on top almost.

Plz send the URL for HC to info@speedesign.be

A bit off topic, but what are your thoughts on http://www.******************.com ?



I guess they must have done something to upset the powers that be.

The **** is supposed to be hosting + accelerator



I have H-Sphere right now and I am looking for something that just seems to work well for resellers etc.

Thanks for your insight.

Well, I haven't used them ... but if they have been banned here, they have just had themselves removed from my list of future possibilities.

HC: www.hostingcontroller.com

We have decided to move foward with HC at this point. I'll keep you all posted as to how it works out, we're going to be doing some pretty extensive development work on it ... really test just how flexible this software is.

I just got Command Matrix and I stuffed up setting the host name when installing it, I opened a ticket with them and they had it all fixed 4 hours later. Very happy customer of CM. They also have a monthly licence for $35/month, which what I was after unlimted support and upgardes :D