Hello,
My hosting company is currently in the process of launching but I still have not totally decided on a control panel. I was wondering what everyone thinks of sphera.

www.sphera.com (http://www.sphera.com)

Thanks,
Greg

I have used Sphera both as an admin and as an end user and I must say it is a very nice system, however IMO it has two very big problems:

1. Admins cannot limit the amount of data transfer for customers

2. No subdomains


Aside from that it is a nice system, but those are big drawbacks.

Good luck with whatever you choose :)

Can't you just use DNS zone records to make subdomains?

I forget what the exact record is, but thats how you make subdomains with my host....

how much does sphera cost in comparison to the other control panel softwares?

Originally posted by nleavens
how much does sphera cost in comparison to the other control panel softwares?

The last time I priced them, they were more expensive than any of the other control panels, unless you have a lot of servers.

I have looked at sphera.com, ensim.com and psoft.net


After all the looking testing and thinking i went with psoft.com H-Shere it was the best one out there and supported windows 2000 also there support is GREAT..

Hello
We are considering Sphera for Windows 2000.
If you buy a lifetime license it works out a lot cheaper than leasing.
You should look at this option even if you needed to get a bank loan to pay for it over 6 months.

Gordon

It is a little to much at this point in our business. I think we are going to go with Plesk.

plus they have a two server minimum deployment and we are only putting one box up to begin with.

don't forget to check out www.hostgui.com

HostGUi doesn't work yet on Windows 2k. However it does work on FreeBSD :) Very Good :).

Stay far,far away from Sphera. Check this out:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=43150&highlight=Sphera

and this:

Actual snippets of emails from customers (some ex-customers ) using the CURRENT version of Sphera:


> I am beginning to have VERY serious doubts about the ability of the
> Sphera
> folks to provide anywhere near a decent hosting product. Their package has
> had so many problems that it is beyond me that they even took it to beta
> yet let alone full production.

and

> I still get 'page not found' about half the time when I first try to
> open any of the Sphera domains. Today I got the following email errors.
>
> It is working now, but this is still an issue to me regardless of what the
> Sphera guys say...
>
> At 9:35:07 Mail failed first with; ERR POP Service disabled, then
>
> ERR Sorry, no mailbox here.


and

> I'm sorry, but I start being very disappointed with the service.
>
> This whole systems turns out to be extremely fragile and inoperative.
>
> 1. When a VDS reaches the disk limit, the site goes down. Can you
> imagine the extreme dangers of this situation? It means that all domains
> hosted on the system can be easily shut down by ANYONE on the internet,
> simply by sending a couple of large emails. This is completely
> unacceptable.
>
> 2. Then, when a VDS reaches it's quota limit, from the Control Panel,
> it's impossible to increase it's quota, an error message "User xxxxx
> exceeds disk quota limit" and the site stays down.
>
> 3. Disk quotas should be dynamic. It's completely unacceptable a domain
> goes down because of disk quotas while we don't even use 20% of our real
> 500 Mb. quota. Sometimes, large emails can be received by ANY domain. Of
> course it's impossible to scale all VDS's to take care of that punctual
> and temporal situation.
>
> 4. Last week we were unable to log into the Reseller Control Panel. We
> had to email you to reset the password.
>
> 5. I created the xxxxx.com VDS... and it's still unused, but right
> now I'm unable to send email to xxxxx.net or x***********, just
> because my reply-to address is @xxxxx.com. And now even worse: The
> mails just get lost, I don't even receive the messages returned. This is
> an error of the SPHERA software. This is very annoying and to me,
> another proof of failing software design.
>
> Right now, xxxxxx.net is down, because I tried to install urchin on
> the VDS. It turned out to occupy 5 Mb. The VDS exceeded the quota and
> now the only way to solve the problem is: FTP data out of the VDS,
> increase the quota, and FTP the data back into the VDS. Do you think
> this is acceptable? To me, it's not.

AND

> Well, you can't say that I did not try...
>
> The Sphera service has been nothing but trouble from day one.
> I spend most of my time trying to figure out why things that worked
> one day do not the next. Or why things that should work simply do not.
>
> I ahve had to rig each individual email accounty in my office to get them
> to work. Some will send, but not receive mail. Some can get mail but always
> error on sending. I had to install a personal SMTP server on several user
> machines here just so they could send email...
>
>
> I have been sending tech support snips of my error logs
> that show the server shutting itself down, and refusing to restart...the
> worst
> example was a four day vacation. Then it mysteriously re-appears.
>
> This is not the least expensive hosting solution available...but I am
> willing
> to pay a little more for the quality service we have had from your company
> in
> the past.
>
> Unfortunately, the Sphera solution has fallen way short of my worst
> expectations.

At some point we had to say "Enough is enough" and cut our losses. I just don't want others to make the same mistake we did. Judging from the posts I've seen regarding Jumpline, their customers are not too happy either....

I feel for your experience with Sphera, but why do you need to search the forums and post the same bashing comments in every Sphera thread you find - seems personal? I think we got the idea the first three threads.

Also, I was going to keep my mouth shut, but after seeing you took the time to find another Sphera thread and bash them, let me say this:

It is not 100% Sphera's fault. You are just as much to blame for you inability to research, plan, test, and then trial before going live. If a salesman tries to sell a Ford Pinto and hypes it up, then you buy it without first doing the above and find out it is a lemon, who is to blame? Yes the salesmans for feeding you BS. But you are too.

"Caveat Emptor"

I hear what you're saying and will curtail any further posts about Sphera, unless something new comes up. I guess I just feel it's important that others don't make the same mistake.
In terms of testing, researching and planning, that's just what we did. We never got to the point where we were advertising the Sphera accounts on our website (Thank God). We tested it for ourselves for several months before asking for some volunteer resellers to ry it for free. It took a while before a lot of issues really surfaced. We had some new resellers call to order accounts with us and we sold them on Sphera, since we thought it was going to work out. They left us shortly after in frustration. Some of our older resellers were testing out Sphera and moved a bunch of domains over and although most of them eventually moved to our CPanel solution, there were a few who left in frustration as well. Anyway,I'll leave it alone and I'm sorry if I offended anyone, but I guess I do tend to take my business personally.