Hi i was wondering how many users out there use cpanel as their control panel, just intereested in the percentage of hosters using this solution :) cheers

I have managed to work it out so that for one of my domains I use plesk, cpanel, and whm.
All of my other domains I use plesk for, though.

I'm using CPanel. I've heard people complain about it, not really sure as I haven't had any problems with it.

We dumped cpanel, or are actually in the middle of doing so, and are going to a far more professional control panel which has so many more options available, that it makes cpanel look like a child's plaything.. Not that I regret using cpanel, it was my first experience with a control panel and I learned a lot about them.

webdude,

dude ... let me know what control panel is that ... you can pm/email me ... Does the panel run on freebsd also? That would be great ..

cheers,
:beer:

I sent you a pm on it. I'm not too concerned over people knowing what one it is (H-sphere). One thing that's better about cpanel is you can completely redesign the user interface. With H-Sphere you can only set the colors and text, but not the layout. Everything else blows cpanel away though. It's costs are far higher though and you need at least $5,000 to blow to do it right (runs best with 3+ servers to start, license fees, merchant fees, etc)

My gosh,

you are trying the one that hostiva is using now. I tried it once and it was just soooo slow to get everything done.

It may give you more control, but I couldn't say it's better. Also, as I remember, you don't have web mail with the h-sphere.

?? It seems faster to me than cpanel. I havent gotten to the webmail, or any mail, part. However, their site says they have it http://psoft.net/h_sphere2_info.html

Regardless, it has about 40 things that cpanel doesnt....like automated signups for one..

My post on cpanel was dumped but it was a good discussion by Tim,Anette and all- you can see the search.
I will stillmaintain best is not to go for any of this high tech staff - see the Tina type at affordablehost.com
learn a little bit about htaccess and you can do many stuff in a better way. Only thing that the Tinatype lacks is that you cannot add or delete dbs at will - a feature if added will make it the greatest.
Regarding mail webmail etc best is sign up for $5 or $ 10 with netmongol or bigbox or every1 and have a much nore professional email both for you and selected/all visitors - no headache of mail functions,SMTP etc .
Ensim,Plesk,Cpanel all have some complaints - I mean some complain about this , some about that - I have not heard any one complain about the Tinatype though. Hsphere is reportedly too complicated and may be slow too but it all depends it seems for the last post proved there were many webhosting companies happy and problem free with the cpanel/darkorb.

Originally posted by Webdude
?? It seems faster to me than cpanel. I havent gotten to the webmail, or any mail, part. However, their site says they have it http://psoft.net/h_sphere2_info.html

Regardless, it has about 40 things that cpanel doesnt....like automated signups for one.. cpanel has never seemed slow to me, but i have read complaints about this when using the default skin. we also have automated signup.. with cpanel.. so it is something you could get going when using it. what i am wondering is... do you know if H-sphere supports IMAP? it wasn't in that list, and is the only thing cpanel doesn't support that we need. everything on that page you linked cpanel has too (except it doesn't support as many OS), and i can be kind of blind when its 6:30am in the morning.. could you list a few of those 40ish things it supports that cpanel doesn't? we want to setup a server that isn't going to use cpanel (well it might if we can't find anything that is better) soon.. so any feedback on this control panel would be wonderful.

as not to throw this thread of course since my questions would be more appropriate in the "Hosting Software and Control Panels" section... Paul, we use cpanel and are quite happy with it maybe 98% of the time. :)

Ok, I will go thru and copy to here what all I know cpanel doesnt support. I really didnt want to get this in depth about it, but I am kinda bored this saturday morning, so what the heck..

Admin, Tech Support and Sales Control Panel interfaces
Automated Sign-ups(can be added into cpanel, but doesnt come with it)
Integrated billing package with support for recurrent billing and email invoicing
Automated credit card charging (Support for Authorize.net, CyberCash, Payflow Pro, Paradata, and Link Point)
Integrated online help with Trouble Ticket System
Miva Shopping Cart (NT and Unix)
SSI, SSL, PHP, ASP, CGI management
Certificate Upload support
Shared SSL Certificate support
MIME types management
FrontPage extensions (never worked for me in cpanel)
Cold Fusion hosting
Chili ASP support
Error Document management
Automatic domain name registration with OpenSRS
etc, etc, etc, etc, etc

Most amazing being billing. A client can upgrade "anything" you allow upgrades to, and the changes be effective immediately as well as their card being billed immediatly. They can upgrde space, bandwth, ip's, anything...and be charged as you have them priced..

Also, as I remember, you don't have web mail with the h-sphere.

H Sphere has web mail. In my opinion it is currently the best contol panel out there. I evaluated all of them before settling on H Sphere.

But I understand that others can reach different conclusion from the same evaluation so I'm not interested in a "panel" war. ;)

Originally posted by Dahlia
cpanel has never seemed slow to me, but i have read complaints about this when using the default skin. we also have automated signup.. with cpanel.. so it is something you could get going when using it. what i am wondering is... do you know if H-sphere supports IMAP? it wasn't in that list, and is the only thing cpanel doesn't support that we need. ...
We (H-Sphere) support IMAP.

On psoft.com regarding Hsphere, they recommend multiple servers to run H-Sphere, but say that it can run on one box.

Any suggestions from any one who has experience with H-Sphere? Could I start off with one server? If I get two one for webhosting and the other as mail server, how do i go about setting this up? They suggest the control panel to be on one, webserver on one and dns server on one, etc. DNS server doesnt take up much space, or cpu intensive? I can understand having a seperate server for mail but not dns, mysql or control panel.

Simply put, can i run a quality hosting business with one server and H-sphere until demand requires me to add more servers?

So much information and its all scattered all over the net, any good resource places for web hosting administration? For instance I havent been able to quite understand how to go about setting up primary and secondary name servers, what is involved in the setup etc. I've found bits and pieces, but for the most part its all coming together. Be nice if there was a place where most of this info on hosting is all together for a newbie.

Thanks!

We have HSphere running on one server at the moment, although it doesn't have any active sites only a couple of development ones until we move everyone from our current server on to it. But we will only be running it as one box for a short while, our current server is going to be formatted and run as the mail server, then once Sun support is in HSphere we will be deploying two Sun Netra X1 server for DNS. Then a couple of weeks later our server for databases will be arriving. So it will be interesting to see how well HSphere can handle moving services about from one box to another.

Originally posted by Webdude
I sent you a pm on it. I'm not too concerned over people knowing what one it is (H-sphere). One thing that's better about cpanel is you can completely redesign the user interface. With H-Sphere you can only set the colors and text, but not the layout.

Says WHO ? :D

The layout can be totally redisigned (already started on it ;) ), it's not as easy as on cpanel, due to the fact you have 2 sets of API's .. one for the colors (that can be set on the admin panel) and one for everythign else .. but you can change anything you like :)

Originally posted by kipper3d
Simply put, can i run a quality hosting business with one server and H-sphere until demand requires me to add more servers?

Yes you can, but a word of advise woudl be, if you goign to use only one server, use a Dual CPU system

cheers

Originally posted by CRego3D


Yes you can, but a word of advise woudl be, if you goign to use only one server, use a Dual CPU system

cheers

Do you know of issues with running HSphere on a single machine with a single CPU?

I realize the obvious advantages of running dual CPU and multiple machines but I'm just a little guy and need to start with existing box (PIII 1Ghz 256 18Gig SCSI 300) and one CPU.

I had CPanel installed and this has been a bad experience resulting in a search for something else. I have narrowed it down to Plesk and HSphere with HSpere currently on top because of the billing and webpage builder.

I need to find a balance of client features, stability, as much hands off management once running, and of course cost effective.

I have also seen reports of support issues with HSphere ... this is what killed CPanel for me. Anyone with recent experience in this area?

Thanks!

Originally posted by asuservice
I have also seen reports of support issues with HSphere ... this is what killed CPanel for me. Anyone with recent experience in this area?

Yes, averag support email response is about an hour for anything we have sent an email to support for.

One thing I would advise is a memory upgrade on your server if you are going to be using just the one to start with.

well Im at the "user end" of hsphere on an account I have - and i must say that I love it!

I wouldnt go back to a cpanel hosting account now ever ;)