i've been researching on becoming a reseller for quite some time
and have foudn many great hosts (esp after browsing this forum)

but the one thing that keeps bugging me is what are the major differences between these three control panels

i understand that plesk is efficient in the sense that it doesn't require an additional CP for the Reseller and u can do it all from one CP.

but i've used Cpanel and like it more because im comfortable with it. also i've seen Cpanel being the most common choice on shared plans among other hosts...

but i've seen some people here specifically request Ensim in their re-seller package..

could someone please clarify me a bit more on these three? or post a link where i could perhaps read more about themm...

thnx

Have you ever considered Hsphere control panel?

www.psoft.net

You can read more about cPanel at www.cpanel.net and I would recommend you sign up for their forum at forum.cpanel.net to learn a bit more of the strong community support they have.

Quite simply, Plesk 7 has taken control panels to the next level in usability and design. I believe that it is going to take off in a big way and we are going to start to see more and more people request it here at WHT. :)

i don't like visiting publisher sites as they always list the features but almost never compare themselves to competitors.

i guess what i was trying to ask was is there a comparison based report on these three? and also including the H-sphere cp cause i see that it comes with its own billing system? :cool:

another thing i wanted to find out was which cp do you guys prefer and why?

Yes Hsphere comes with its own billing and support helpdesk system.

I'd say I prefer H-Sphere on a 10:1 ratio against any other control panel.

However, PLESK 7 is looking sharp, and cPanel is always popular.

The big advantage of H-Sphere is of course it's dual platform capabilities, and all it's pre-integrated protocols, such as billing, signup, tickets, etc.

Plesk 7 is starting to give me the impression that they are going to take the number 2 spot from CPanel, but not just yet (first RC needs a little work).

Simon

IHSL mentioned a good one (H-Sphere), but I'm wondering if you left out DirectAdmin for a reason. Its pretty solid, but doesn't have the features CPanel does.

(BTW we use Ensim on windows servers)

Cheers
Jeff

I'd recommend CPanel if you want a control panel that has the most demand. Ensim and Plesk both have a lot less bugs than CPanel, as CPanel is very insecure and is very unstable.

Mostly, its preference.

Greetings:

Unless I'm mistaken, Plesk, Cpanel, and Ensim are "just another control panel."

H-Sphere provides complete shared hosting automation.

As a provider, H-Sphere allows you to offer your resellers the same hosting automation you use therefore making their lives easier as well.

Tie in the ability to have servers across the world managed by the H-Sphere control panel server, and it is a dream for a hetrogenous data center environment along with heterogenous operating system support (RedHat Linux, FreeBSD, Windows 200x).

Thank you.

never played with plesk, but as for ease of use... (if thats your only concern) either ensim or cpanel work

cpanel seems to have a lot more functionality than ensim does, or at least the ensim panel I have used. both offer a very easy to use click interface... I'll have to see about plesk... though from the looks of things, there are some very experienced people out there using plesk

Plesk 7 is a welcome improvement to the control panel arena.

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Greetings:

Unless I'm mistaken, Plesk, Cpanel, and Ensim are "just another control panel."

H-Sphere provides complete shared hosting automation.

As a provider, H-Sphere allows you to offer your resellers the same hosting automation you use therefore making their lives easier as well.

Tie in the ability to have servers across the world managed by the H-Sphere control panel server, and it is a dream for a hetrogenous data center environment along with heterogenous operating system support (RedHat Linux, FreeBSD, Windows 200x).

Thank you.

yes. i myself, even though i havent used ensim/plesk, seem to like h-sphere cuz of its "automation" also, i dont want to b managing three different CP's :rolleyes:

Another panel you may wish to consider looking into is Direct Admin. This is a nice panel and has a lot of potential as well.

HSphere is pretty slick.

But for really stupid people like me, Cpanel is a "no need to read the manual" system. :)

To the people using Plesk on windows:
Is Plesk 6.5/windows equivalent in features to plesk 7/linux?

To the people using Plesk on windows:
Is Plesk 6.5/windows equivalent in features to plesk 7/linux?

BTW: Does Plesk it have multilingual support preinstalled?

I have the subjective impression that Plesk is easier to use than Hsphere...

Originally posted by albatroz
To the people using Plesk on windows:
Is Plesk 6.5/windows equivalent in features to Plesk 7/Linux?

I use Plesk for RedHat 7.x and Enterprise; although from what
I hear Plesk 6.x for Windows is a little buggy. Please take a
moment and visit their forum and take few minutes and read
some posts. I might be wrong or might be part of the
'installer/person' installing it.

What sold me was the price, I had my 5.x version for
199$ -- 30 domains. I herd much of H-Sphere but a little
pricey for my pocket same with cPanel.

Plesk comes with multiple language options, lots of
addons that becomes as good as cPanel or even better.

Huge difference from 6.0 to 7.0 version and I wonder what
Plesk 8, will hold. I just wish they stop jacking up the
price, start having some of the addons built into the panel
and read their posts more often and pay attention to
user needs. I think they do a good job and they have
awesome customer service support.

Originally posted by EnigmaBiz
What sold me was the price, I had my 5.x version for
199$ -- 30 domains. I herd much of H-Sphere but a little
pricey for my pocket same with cPanel.
Hi,
$199 would buy you 57 H-Sphere licenses from most providers, or 44 licenses from pSoft direct (unlimited domains per license), so doesn't that make it more cost effective than Plesk?

Sorry for the question, but that particular bit of your post struck me as odd.

Simon

Interesting, I hope I mentioned that I haven't tried or
demod some of the other panels but I must say that it
did take us awhile to get through to Plesk and have
the feature "sub-domains" available.

I was just looking into upgrading from 30 domain lic.
to 100 for $249... than after that I pay a yearly SUS.

Well this is a good thing than, I hope Plesk reads this
post and re-thinks about their price structure and their
competition. I just wish they had backup, or spamassasin
built into the new release... Maybe that's the reason I am
still using the 30 domain lic.

I already emailed sales @ H-Sphere but it's only 2:19 am :D

I went ahead and read their installation docs and I am impressed.

Now I recall. When I purchased Plesk, H-Shere were expensive or
they were in BETA back than.

Not an expert on the subject but in my personal opinion, CPanel is the best for ease of use. Ensim could do what you wanted but boy its not intuitive at all. I'm having a nasty experience with Plesk right now and it's limited functionality. Suffice to say that if you are going to be reselling to more advanced clientele, the limitations of Plesk might drive them away (as it is doing with me on my current host.)

I am currently evaluating a Linux Plesk7 host that includes antivirus protection.

This way I plan to sell Plesk based accounts as an advanced hosting category vs my old cpanel (no antivirus plans).

According to your message I would be nuts? :(

I wouldn't say nuts but given my experience with all three control panels mentioned here, I'd rate Plesk the lowest. If you have basic users with basic needs its fine and maybe even better for them since it is very basic in and of itself. However for advanced users with advanced needs (for example, having one database user able to access multiple databases, my current problem) it just sucks. Again, I'm not an expert, its just my personal opinion.

That is my reason for choosing Plesk because my clients.
Their knowledge of hosting and in general are very limited
and to less confuse them I picked Plesk.

Anti virus via Plesk you need some tweaking with ClamAV and
the QMail Scanner, couple of minutes to set up and I belive
there is a how to on their forum.

Taken from their website:


SNIP:

Pricing

The software is licensed at US $4.50 per account ONE TIME FEE and can be purchased in packs of 100 accounts. Account can be defined as an instance of the plan. Once user signs up for the plan, a new account is created. One account regardless of its type (admin, reseller, user) requires one license. Once an account is deleted, the license can be reused by a new customer.

Annual support & upgrade policy is available for 20% of the total license fee. This fee covers free technical support coverage & free upgrades for a year. You don't pay the 20% for the first year.


ENDSNIP:

End result: $450.00 per server for 100 accounts

Hi,
It's not per server, it's per billable account/control panel. These accounts can be distributed amongst the servers in your cluster as you see fit.

You can find better prices than $4.50 per license. For example, we buy ours from HSphereSupport, at $3.50 per license.

There is also companies that lease the licenses out, at a much lower price.

There is no per domain/per server licensing fee on pSoft's H-Sphere.

Simon

So let me get this right. So for every account/client that's
one click.

As Plesk has it, one master account or client login then
he can have individual FTP Logins, email accounts, email
aliases, and so on.

Well it all comes down to HSphere being cheaper than
Plesk. Finally Plesk 7 has sub-domains built in and not
being counted as main domains.

With Plesk v3 to 6. A Sub Domain counted as a full domain;
therefore if I had a 30 domain lic., having sub-domains it would
count as 1 click/domain and that was just not right.

Originally posted by princessa
I wouldn't say nuts but given my experience with all three control panels mentioned here, I'd rate Plesk the lowest. If you have basic users with basic needs its fine and maybe even better for them since it is very basic in and of itself. However for advanced users with advanced needs (for example, having one database user able to access multiple databases, my current problem) it just sucks. Again, I'm not an expert, its just my personal opinion.
Interesting. What are teh "advanced" features that cpanel has and that Plesk doesn't. We run both and I can find no drawbacks to Plesk. Our clients drive us nuts with their advanced needs. I know a few hosts and I can say that our clients are some of the most advanced webmasters I've seen.

As long as you have a good admin team that can manipulate server functions (i.e. pick up the slack from the CP) then all is good.

Originally posted by usalinked
Taken from their website:



ENDSNIP:

End result: $450.00 per server for 100 accounts
wrong part is that you think it is per server - if you have 10 servers, and only 100 accounts on them - it is still $450.

Originally posted by usalinked

End result: $450.00 per server for 100 accounts

The per server cost depends on how many accounts you pack into one server.

H-Sphere initial cost is $4.50 per account which is first year, subsequent years are $0.90 per account per year.

Do your maths and you will know if it is expensive for you.

Originally posted by RaTz
i've been researching on becoming a reseller for quite some time
and have foudn many great hosts (esp after browsing this forum)

but the one thing that keeps bugging me is what are the major differences between these three control panels

i understand that plesk is efficient in the sense that it doesn't require an additional CP for the Reseller and u can do it all from one CP.

but i've used Cpanel and like it more because im comfortable with it. also i've seen Cpanel being the most common choice on shared plans among other hosts...

but i've seen some people here specifically request Ensim in their re-seller package..

could someone please clarify me a bit more on these three? or post a link where i could perhaps read more about themm...

thnx
Since you are a reseller and you are going to support your clients, choose a CP that you are comfortable to provide support, your clients needs your support.
If you choose a CP that is best in the whole wide world and you cannot provide support to your clients, I don't think you will end up with many clients.
On the other hand, if you choose the worst CP in the whole wide world and you are able to help your clients and make them happy, you will end up with more clients.
I find that most of our end user clients don't care what cp we have as long as we can help them achieve what they want to do. On the other hand, most resellers prefer cPanel.

So my question would be say if you had a reseller that had 100 domains under them would you need an additional 100 licenses to accomidate for those accounts also or just the one license to accomidate for the reseller.

Most do prefer and choose cPanel/WHM.

Originally posted by datawan
So my question would be say if you had a reseller that had 100 domains under them would you need an additional 100 licenses to accomidate for those accounts also or just the one license to accomidate for the reseller.
If those domains were assigned in a "one domain per user" environment, then yes, a H-Sphere license would be needed for each.

However, if you had a scenario of let's say 30 accounts, with 3-4 domains each spread through those 100, then you'd only need 30 licenses. These are one-time fees, so the cost is instantly recoverable, compared with some other platforms in which you pay a monthly, quarterly, semi-annual, or annual fee.

Each license can be simplified to "if a control panel is generated, that's 1 license". Each can house unlimited domains.

Originally posted by cybexhost1
Most do prefer and choose cPanel/WHM.
Most what?

"Most" implies that it has 'across the board' supremacy, which is far from the truth. CPanel is popular, it is relatively stable, but it's popularity is largely contained to those who react to iconic administration, as opposed to pure power and complete durability, a'la H-Sphere, and PLESK 7 to a certain extent.

Simon

We use Ensim. It is secure and easy to use for your clients.