Hi All,

I know i am meant to read up a lot of books or surf the internet but time is not my friend at this moment.

I am a newbie and need a reliable but affordable windows hosting control panel with the following, if not more or all -

User friendly controll panel
integrate with existing thridparty mailserver
Reseller & affiliate accounts
bandwidth restrictions
MySQL database
DNS registration and hosting
New account sign-up
support ticketting.....


Would i be needing a billing server? Or is there a total package? If not, what billing solution would be best for us to offer prepaid?

I will appreciate all the help we can get to get us up and running as an automated hosting company.

Thanks and look forward to your responses.

I reccommend HELM, although I haven't used it extensively it has a GUI which is exceptional and has many, many features including billing.

we have tried hosting controller with not to great of luck, ensim with good luck... looking to move to plesk 6.5...

Helm seems to be pretty good & they have answered a lot more of my questions. I noticed it was pretty difficult to get answers for hosting so I went to their forum.

You can also find a good price from one of their resellers here:
http://www.helmtastic.com/portal/

HOsting accelerator 2.0 is a great choice

helm
I don't understand Helm. It seems the end user has no where to set up email accs, config etc. the reseller has no place to set up hosting packages, i.e 200mb, 1Gb bandwidth, purchase additional bandwidth/space, Ftp acc, domain alias, etc.

Domain registration, I wonder if we can set up together with enom reseller account.

And I read somewhere there was the bandwidth count and database space used were not taken into account. the update is only for 1 month after purchase.

I find helm hard to use somehow.



currently using ensim pro 20 license. But I hope to look for other cp that supports unlimited acct, has user friendly, all the necessary functions and is less costly.

Hi All,

May thanks for all the interesting relies so far.

But what will do the follwing -

User friendly controll panel
integrate with existing thridparty mailserver
Reseller & affiliate accounts
bandwidth restrictions
MySQL database
DNS registration and hosting
New account sign-up
support ticketting.....

Cheers

Originally posted by blythe
helm
I don't understand Helm. It seems the end user has no where to set up email accs, config etc. the reseller has no place to set up hosting packages, i.e 200mb, 1Gb bandwidth, purchase additional bandwidth/space, Ftp acc, domain alias, etc.

Domain registration, I wonder if we can set up together with enom reseller account.

I saw the same thing when using their demo. It's confusing to say the least.

Can someone who has used Helm comment on this? Where does the reseller go to set up packages? Where does a user go to set up email accounts?

I played around with it on a test server a few weeks ago. I'll be setting it up hopefully this weekend. But a lot of the Helm questions should be asked in their forum. I have recieved more help in there actually than any other forum.

What e-mail program xsl? Check out: http://www.webhostautomation.com/helm/compatibility.asp?display=MAIL to see what is supported.

Can't beleive no one has mentioned H-Sphere! With H-Sphere you have the ability to host both Linux and Windows. Go to their site to find out more >> http://psoft.net

Hello. cPanel is coming out for windows, but i dont know how long.

H-sphere is fine if you have a cluster of servers, but of no use if you only have one.

Helm is available for both single servers and groups of them, so it is probably your best bet.

It offers support for most of what you are looking for.

Originally posted by Simpli-Erica
I saw the same thing when using their demo. It's confusing to say the least.

Can someone who has used Helm comment on this? Where does the reseller go to set up packages? Where does a user go to set up email accounts?

We have used Helm now for around 9 or 10 months and I think it is excellent. The support staff and community is great! They also listen to requests the best they can.

I do understand the difficulties of learning it. I have come across many people who struggle to understand it but once it suddenly clicks in place in your mind you will begin to like it more and more.

To answer your questions...
The Reseller would click on "Hosting Plans" and then on Add New. You then follow through all of the menu's specifying how many email accounts, ftp usernames, ASP.NET installs, Domain installs etc.. and then you repeat this for all of your plans you offer.

Once you have completed this task you are then ready to start adding a customer.

You add a customer and then add a hosting package to his account.

Once added you need to make sure that is activated by either making payment or marking it as ready.

Once this is complete you click on Domains and add a domain to the system.

And finally... :) Once you have added the domain you click on Domains and then on the domain you will see all the options aplicable to that domain. You can add forwarders, POP mail boxes, FTP usernames, PHP, MySQL etc...

It sounds like a long list but the whole process of doing this is about 10 minutes to get the packages configured and once the rest of the account is configured it can be pretty much automated.

I am glad to see that you like Helm Stormhosts. I was testing it at home & it seemed very easy to get everything down. I am ready to install it tomorrow.

And extremely glad to know that the support still continued after you buy the product. I was extremely happy with the ideas, suggestions, & help that I received over at their forum. It was the only forum that actually did answer some specific questions. We are doing the month to month since it seems they are adding extras to their CP all the time.

in my opinion, HA is better than Helm :)

Originally posted by Simpli-Erica
I saw the same thing when using their demo. It's confusing to say the least.

Can someone who has used Helm comment on this? Where does the reseller go to set up packages? Where does a user go to set up email accounts? It does seem a bit complicated at first glance, but it’s very good when you know your way around. The only thing is it hasn’t got a ticket system installed.

To add mail accounts you can be the web host, reseller or end user.

The web host can view all domain and accounts, and modify anything.

The reseller has control of domains under his account, you simply click on the domain you want to admin, then the entire feature open up… Database, email, ftp, stats and so on.

The end user has the access the same way as the reseller but only domains the reseller has entitled to their account, accessed the same way, click on the domain (the end user might only have one this is where it’s off putting) then all the options open up, database, email, ftp and so on.

I hope I haven’t confused anyone further, another panel is www.cwipanel.com very good and has a built in ticket system

<edit>What's this about cPanel for Windows, where was this announced?</edit>