Has anyone used H-sphere 2.0?
Its very feature rich and mentions just about anything you need, but is it really that good????

Looks Good. But I Dont Think Any Body Would Have Used By Now As It Is A Reletively New Pruduct.
I would also like to hear from the users of H-Sphere 2.0






:cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool: :cool:

I would be interested in hearing any info on it also. I know alot of people had issue with bugs in 1.5. Would be nice if they got everything running smoothly now :)

Yea the older version of it was just crap!

Just try it, we have login for the admin interface, and for Trial accounts on a production servers hosted by one of our clients.
We have several clients in the productions.

PS: I work for the company, so if you have any questions, email me at iseletsk@psoft.net, or email to info@psoft.net

Originally posted by iseletsk
Just try it, we have login for the admin interface, and for Trial accounts on a production servers hosted by one of our clients.
We have several clients in the productions.

PS: I work for the company, so if you have any questions, email me at iseletsk@psoft.net, or email to info@psoft.net


Awhile back, I sent several emails to sales@ and didn't get a reply until I got mad. I'm thinking that support@ is probably worse!

--Tina

When did you send us an email?
We usually reply the same day, or at most in 48 hours.
Does anyone else have the same problem?

I must say the product looks very good. Good idea etc. I also sent e-mail to info and sales and the only reply I got was the sales. Hmmm, how many people do support for this product? I don't like that fact that there's no phone support etc. Is this a one man company? Can you tell us who is using this product so we can check them out? I will really like to see this thing in a production environment outside of your network.

While we are a small (but profitable) company, here is a basic internals:
1) 15 development staff
2) 4 people support staff (we are highering more right now
3) 2 people doing sales (I am one of them)

Some of the companies that use our software:

http://cp.humanoasis.com
http://cp.hsphere.likewhoa.com
http://cp.smartfunction.net (http://www.piva.net)

None of them are part of our network (even that we use piva.net to host our server).

Those are servers that are already in the production.
There are more companies that are doing finishing touches.

Regarding the info & sales --> I recieve emails from both of those addresses.

Thanks for the reply. That will explain why I only got one reply. I will check out these two companies.

I checked out the demo and I think the interface needs a lot of work. For starters, when you attempt to use a feature like MySQL for example, you continuously have to keep saying OK, or clicking "LAUNCH" buttons through multiple levels... it's gets pretty frustrating after a while... if I click "MySQL Database" it should take me to my MySQL database, not through a handful of hoops before hand.

Second, it's not very kind to the eyes... orange/brown/beige? Yuck. And the link color is burgundy which doesnt show up on brown that well. The interface also changes in operation as well from tool to tool, which means you have to figure out how to use each one... there should be more similiarity in operation between the tools.

There's also too many sections... there are sections that can be combined for easier navigation.

Beyond the interface, it looks pretty good. But 4.50 per account is a little to pricey when you get into the 1000s of accounts.

I went to try the demo but someone changed the password :(

Originally posted by lukas
I checked out the demo and I think the interface needs a lot of work. For starters, when you attempt to use a feature like MySQL for example, you continuously have to keep saying OK, or clicking "LAUNCH" buttons through multiple levels... it's gets pretty frustrating after a while... if I click "MySQL Database" it should take me to my MySQL database, not through a handful of hoops before hand.
We decided to listen, and changed our interface to take you directly to the MySQL, domain, mail ... whatever page, without intermediate pages.


Second, it's not very kind to the eyes... orange/brown/beige? Yuck. And the link color is burgundy which doesnt show up on brown that well.
We added new color scheme (should be more by the end of the day). But we expect each host to adjust it to match "the corporate colors". Just look under Look & Feel menu, for 'Colors and Images'.
:blush:

PS: Password for the admin user is reset to admin (We also disabled the ability to change password.

Looks allot better. Another suggestion is a Knowledge base for both users and admin. Also help screens will also help out. Some of the pages just don't come out and tell you what you need to do.

I wrote them and sent my phone number. I got an email back saying that my number was busy and that I should call them. OK...

I called them. I get someone who answers "Hello...". I think I have the wrong number. Not Positive Software... But it is! Sounds like someone in his apartment that I just woke up! I say I am interest in H-Sphere. The guy (a little groggy) says "What you need to know?" Well, I ask if he's he sales person. He says no. I say that I would like to speak to a sales person about the possibility of using their software. He says "No sales people are here but I can have one call you".

OK, so I left my number and waited. Waited a week now and still no call.

SO I wrote another email. THis time explaining the above. Hoping that someone would read it and say "Wow, we better call this guy cause he wants to give us money and we haven't talked to him yet!" I get a response saying that they called me but I didn't answer. That I should call them. What? Again? Are they trying to avoid long distance charges? Hmmm...

So I called again. Once more I get the groggy guy on the phone "Hello..."

Well, that's as far as I can go. Sorry... I really liked what I saw on their web site as far as architecture and so on. But I am under the impression that it IS a one-man shop and basically there's no infrastructure in place. I am not gambling the future of my business on a company that will not call me and when I call they answer "Hello..."

We have two people answering the phone.(I am one of them) I have to admit - we are a small shop, everyone is Russian speaking - so there are some problems with english.
We also have 6 people doing sys-admin/support installations, 9 developers for H-Sphere, 5 developers & designers for SiteStudio. And two technical writers. And we hire at the rate of about a person per week. Most of the development team is located in Ukraine. This is why we are able to keep our prices low. We are not large venture capital funded company, that will be down the drain once the money run out.
We are profitable, our operations costs are low. And our team is a bunch of dedicated professionals.

At this moment I have two people I was trying to reach for several days, and don't know if one of them is you. One named Pab.., and the other one Bri.. I don't know who I am talking to in the above post :) If it neither of them - it means that my something gone terribly wrong. I usually prefer not to interupt the conversation and finish what ever discussion I have with the client - especially considering that they take some time. Emails are usually answered within one hour.

Anyway,
If you are still interested - call the office, or email at
info@psoft.net or iseletsk@psoft.net

Best,
Igor Seletskiy

I must defend psoft here for a second and NO I have no connection to them. Not even a customer yet but I've always gotten my answer answered in less than 1 hour. And gotten several phone calls from him.

We bought H Sphere 2 for our new servers after reviewing the other control panels. It was the only one that provide all the features we required plus it came with a browser web site builder which we had planned on buying separately.

It generally takes us about 24 hours to get an email response from their sales or support staff, but the response has always been helpful. edited: I should point out that I do not expect immediate response due to the differences in time zones. Most software companies do not supply 24 hour knowledgable tech support.

We have not telephoned them, we always use email support. But we depend on email for all our support needs with our other suppliers plus that is what we furnish most of our clients so we are not upset about the lack or quality of any telephone support.

As it stands now we are very satisfied with the product, the service and the price. Especially the price, not having to pay a monthly fee for every client we host. Hope they never start doing that.

We are not running it live as yet, since we prefer to thoroughly test and understand a software product ourselves before we place it in the hand of our clients. And this control panel contains a large number of features to learn and understand. But we should have all our clients transferred over to the new servers with this software by the end of October.

Once we have it up with our clients on it, I will post additional information if we encounter unexpected problems. I believe in reporting the bad with the good.

The biggest knock I have against it is that the manuals are not detailed enough. But that is true of all software written today, which is why computers books are written at $50 each. And even the computer books are usually not complete so you end up buying several different books about a subject in order to receive complete coverage.

Don't know if this is the type of information you were requesting, but it is our experience to date with the company.

Reading the various messages, and not singling any particular message or person out nor just this thread, I often wonder how much of what is written is valid criticism and how much of it is from competitors trying to knock another competitor.

edited: PS. We are not associated with them. We just bought their product because after testing it and some of the other cp software we thought it was the best on the market.

So I would suggest that if you need a control panel software you test all of them and decide which best meets your needs. Which might be different from what what we need.:D

Originally posted by easygoing
Don't know if this is the type of information you were requesting, but it is our experience to date with the company.


Keep us posted please!!! I'm also seriously considering buying H-Sphere but am reluctant in doing so because it's core is Unix based and also requires DNS and Mail on Unix while we have a 100% W2K environment in place. I could live with DNS on Unix but it's core and mail should defenitly be on W2K as well (cheaper to manage, good scalability, excellent supported, more feature rich, excellent stability).

Anyway thanks so far and keep us posted!
DrAtomic

Right now I think they only support mail on Linux. Qmail! Send them an e-mail. I currently use it and over all I'm happy with it.

We are 100% Linux, so I can't comment on their W2k abilities.

However we do plan on adding a few W2k boxes later this year, which is another reason we liked their control panel, as they state it is easy to operate a mixed environment from their control panel.

But our core system will always be Linux, afraid I can't agree with you on your comments concerning Win systems. :argue: :) :)

We too are testing the system, they where kind enought to install a fresh copy on one of our test servers, so far I must say i'm impressed, I will taclle the API next and see what can/cannot be customized, some of my customers have tested it as well, and overall everybody seemes to be very excited about it.

as for email, usually in 24/48 hours I get somethign back from one of them, not as fast as one woudl like, but it's ok

Hi Carlos,

Since you are a long time user for CPanel how do you think it compares to H-Sphere?

In my opinion H-Sphere is much more robust and most of all scalable.

Originally posted by Flesk
Hi Carlos,

Since you are a long time user for CPanel how do you think it compares to H-Sphere?

In my opinion H-Sphere is much more robust and most of all scalable.

"Robust" is indeed the right word, I am now playing around with the skin .. the default one is a little ugly (where have I heard that before ?) but bearable, but I'm sure we can do somethign much nicer ;)

I love it, it's in a much more advanced state than Cpanel is.

If you come up with some good skin let us know. I might be interested in getting a copy for a fee.

Originally posted by iseletsk
When did you send us an email?
We usually reply the same day, or at most in 48 hours.
Does anyone else have the same problem?

I e-mailed them awile back and they responded maybe a week later...not a good first impression

Originally posted by cahostnet
If you come up with some good skin let us know. I might be interested in getting a copy for a fee.

me too. I am really considering trying them.

Originally posted by CRego3D


"Robust" is indeed the right word, I am now playing around with the skin .. the default one is a little ugly (where have I heard that before ?) but bearable, but I'm sure we can do somethign much nicer ;)

I love it, it's in a much more advanced state than Cpanel is.

I'm surprised to hear you say that. I'm ready to take h-sphera for a test drive now.

I also tryed to contact them about 3 months back. They were very hard to understand, the guys were not very friendly and i could never talk to a tech. I allways had to wait for a call back, they gave me a cell number of the tech and it was not the right number. We also setup a test server which they were going to install a fresh copy of it on their and for 4 weeks they never loged in. They emailed us once saying that they couldnt get in the the username/pass we gave them but i tested it and it worked fine (also the logs show'd no attempt of a connection to ssh/telnet) Finally after calling and calling and getting pist we decided to leave them alone. They didnt treat their customers like they should have. We have over 800 Clients and are growing and termendes (sp?) rate. maybe they improved their support/english now but 2-3 months ago it was terrible.

Originally posted by cahostnet
If you come up with some good skin let us know. I might be interested in getting a copy for a fee.

I am definitely going to create one, yesterday I started playing around with the ICONS .. even using come of mine from cpanel (after all, they are mine)

you can see it here

http://www.wizardshosting.com/images/SPXImage01.jpg

the ones with the black border are the new ones

But when we do create a new skin, I would very much doubt it would be release, my previous experience with such a topic (Cpanel skin) has thought me a big lesson already.

But I do recommend you guys to take a look at this control panel, ther are a few things missing, but the programmers seem to have a very fast turn round of new features (heck, when you have 17 programmers, it helps ;) )

what would you say is missing from it?

Originally posted by ShaunM
maybe they improved their support/english now but 2-3 months ago it was terrible.

Yeah, that is true :D .. when I call on the phone sometimes it's hard to understand them, so I mostly correspond by email, they know how to write in english quite well, so I never had a problem understanding them there :)

As for the turnaround in the emails, it's been quite fast

Originally posted by multipleimage
what would you say is missing from it?

1) A list of all the bandwidth usage per site (if you log into teh customer's control panel, you do see the bandwidth usage, but I want an external listing) (cheduled for 10-20 days)

2) Crontab editing on the control panel (scheduled for 2.07 I believe)

3) Reseller's Private Nameservers (scheduled for 2.1 I believe)

but the features it has not more than makes up for it, but those 3 are a must have in the near future, expecially number 3

H-Sphere team seems to be very responsive.

I usually ask them to add new features which anyone would like to see in their Control Panel and they normally add those features in quite a short period of time. It depends on the feature ofcourse, but it's usually fast to implement since their code seems to be very well structured and flexible.

We sometimes, even ask them to change the way they think when displaying stuff and if they think it's an important change they will do it.

One thing I've been asking them is something like a private forum where the users could join and discuss new features for the product. Let's wait and see...

I think a nice new feature it will have, which I tried to convince them, is to have multiple registrars so that you can choose to register diferent domain types from diferent registrars (though it is transparent to the user).

The other new feature is to support just domain registration without actually creating a hosting package. This will make you provide just domain registration within H-Sphere without having another set of scripts to do it. It will also make you have one central database of clients, instead of two.

Originally posted by Flesk
One thing I've been asking them is something like a private forum where the users could join and discuss new features for the product. Let's wait and see...
That's a terrific idea :) .. Igor !!! "hint" "hint"

I think a nice new feature it will have, which I tried to convince them, is to have multiple registrars so that you can choose to register diferent domain types from diferent registrars (though it is transparent to the user).

True, I have bulkregister, but will gladly shell out the 250 for open srs in order to use this feature

The other new feature is to support just domain registration without actually creating a hosting package.

Didn't even tought of it, indeed that's a must have (and somewhat easy to integrate I woudl assume), make it so the customer can buy the domain right in their control panel ;) .. no ? :D

now .. let me send them an email .. that forum idea is indeed good ..

<<EDIT: Please post in Related Offers Forum>>

Chicken .. there is a big different between advertising and a statement .. geez

<<MOD NOTE:>>
Yes there is but I consider, "We are now... if interested contact me..." less of a statement, and more like advertising, so no geezin' me bucko! :D

*squirts geezwhiz up Carlos' nose when he falls asleep*
<</MOD NOTE>>

I'm amazed at those that report slow email response timing totaling in the days or weeks.

Back in June it would take us 1-2 days to get a response but never more than two days.

I am now receiving response to most emails within 2-4 hours of my sending the email. Even on weekends, which is surprising. I receive a quick turn around from both sales and tech support.

I deal with Dell, OpenSRS, BulkRegister, enom.com, and two NOCs on a regular basis using email. All of them take two-three days to respond except enom.com, who also generally responds within a few hours of the email being sent if it is sent in their scheduled support hours.

So H Sphere response time is quite good, considering the time zone they are in compared to my time zone.

I agree with :
1. Reseller's Private Nameservers
2. multiple registrars
3. user forum

as a wish list. I have asked them about the nameserver question several times. I am going to send them another email asking about these items again.

As a purchaser of their control panel my request might carry a little more weight than it did when I was just testing their system against the other available systems.

Also thanks for clueing me into the Reseller section. I had not paid any attention to that but will definitely check into it. We expect to use a lot of licenses ourselves plus we could offer them to our server clients.

Originally posted by easygoing
3. user forum

Igor sent me and email a little while ago saying he will try to get one up this weekend .. lets keep our finguers crossed ;)

Hmmm, user forums are a good idea, however if you'd implement a forum you'd better use http://forum.snitz.com/ which is a freeware version of the board we're using here... If you'd implement just some forum the effect of it will be lost an most users will not even use it...

Just my 2€ct...

DrAtomic

I just finished installing the forum. Right now it is located at:
http://www.psoft.net/forum/upload/ (not a final url)

Any comments/ideas are welcome.

Igor.

Just wanted to let you know, gentlemen, that my company purchased 100 HSphere licenses, back in Aug. 2001. Now we
install a fresh 5 server setup to test it.

Admin Server: Linux RH + PostgreSQL
Webserver: FreeBSD 4.4
Mail + Primary DNS: FreBSD 4.4
SQL Server: Linux RH + MySQL
Secondary DNS: FreeBSD 4.4

We plan to put 1000 user accounts in this setup (price range from
$7.2 Basic to 28.8 Premium). I will post here details later as we go through the process.

Meanwhile, I would like to mention, that Igor (sales at psoft.net HSphere RD) was kind with us, helpful and quick with response.
Thank you, Igor!

Originally posted by Anatole
Admin Server: Linux RH + PostgreSQL
Webserver: FreeBSD 4.4
Mail + Primary DNS: FreBSD 4.4
SQL Server: Linux RH + MySQL
Secondary DNS: FreeBSD 4.4

Hi Anatole

I am really curious, can you exmplain your decision in the OS's for each server, I am undecided on what OS to use myself, so any insides you have woudl be very helpfull :)

Aldso, what's the hardware for each of those machines ? :)

Linux runs faster on SMP machines, Linux multithreading is better than in FreeBSD, and there is XFS port for Linus, so we use it where solid database support is a must. FreeBSD, on the other hand is more stable under heavy load so we chose it for Web and mail servers. Moreover, FreeBSD is very simple to keep up to date.

I think that if you use a Linux distro like Debian its also easy to keep it updated like FreeBSD.

we have been encapsulated in a linux only world, so allow me to ask .. how does the FreeBSD upgrading goes ?

and .. from my previous question, what are the hardware specs of those machines ? :)

Web server:
dual PIII@933MHz supermicro board w/2GB ECC reg DRAM
Adaptec U160 controller and 2 x 36GB IBM U160 10K HDDs
integreted Intel 100Mbps Ethernet

SQL Server: similiar config @866MHz with 1GB ecc reg DRAM

Mail + Pri. DNS: similiar config @800MHz and with 512MB RAM

HSphere server:
Intel desktop board 1CPU integreated video, 100Mbps LAN.
512 MB ram, 933MHz CPU dual 20GB 7,2K IBM IDE HDDs

Sec. DNS: similiar to HSphere w256MB ram and dual 13GB
IBM IDE HDDs
(have heard reports about failures with IBM ide drives, but thanks God, never met one)

Originally posted by DrAtomic
Hmmm, user forums are a good idea, however if you'd implement a forum you'd better use http://forum.snitz.com/ which is a freeware version of the board we're using here... If you'd implement just some forum the effect of it will be lost an most users will not even use it...

Just my 2€ct...

DrAtomic

Forum for Windows? :) Are you kidding? :)

hey guys
they made a forum:
http://www.psoft.net/forum/upload/

check it out

hey, Igor, I speak russian too :)
Email me if you need any russian/english speaking people

oh yeah, i use Hostiva for hosting and they have some problems with hsphere i think which makes all of our servers run slow, they said that the control panel uses a lot of their resources... don't know if any of that is true....

-Dimitry [dimitrix.net]

Originally posted by DimitrixNET

oh yeah, i use Hostiva for hosting and they have some problems with hsphere i think which makes all of our servers run slow, they said that the control panel uses a lot of their resources... don't know if any of that is true....

-Dimitry [dimitrix.net]
The problem was caused by tomcat using too much resources to serve static images. We upgraded Hostiva today to use Apache+Tomcat binding, and
I believe the problem went away.

Dimitry, please follow up on this one.

Thanks,
Igor.

so far psoft seems like a good company

Originally posted by sergio


Forum for Windows? :) Are you kidding? :)

Ohhhhh come on.... Can you do more then just take the piss on Windows...

DrAtomic
Ps. for a fully functional site using it: http://www.babit.net/forum
Ps2. VBulletin seems just as good.
Ps3. I just made the point because others like phorum simply... Well don't work as pleasantly...

Originally posted by DrAtomic


Ohhhhh come on.... Can you do more then just take the piss on Windows...

Ps2. VBulletin seems just as good.
Ps3. I just made the point because others like phorum simply...

Firs of all - I'm worried that it is windows only forum.

Second - after last wave of windows viruses(Red Worm), I'll hesitate to use it as server in Internet.

And even if forum is free - you should pay for windows to run it.

[/quote]Second - after last wave of windows viruses(Red Worm), I'll hesitate to use it as server in Internet.

And even if forum is free - you should pay for windows to run it.
[quote]

All those Windows viruses are only hitting people because apparently most Windows admins are reluctant to maintain their systems... I suffered from neither nimda nor Red Worm since my machines where uptodate... If you choose not to maintain your Unix flavoured machine it will most likely get hacked... Oh well, let;s get back onto the subject again... H-Sphere. Any news?

DrAtomic

I am also curious what else is going on for people testing this product.

One more thing I noticed is the credit card merchant gateways... Right now I don't use any of the ones listed(however I'm not pleased with what I have and will need to change).

Originally posted by slade
I am also curious what else is going on for people testing this product.

One more thing I noticed is the credit card merchant gateways... Right now I don't use any of the ones listed(however I'm not pleased with what I have and will need to change).
There seem to be a handful of people at forums.psoft.net who are actual users of the product. That might be a good place to start when looking for feedback from customers.

Matt