What is the best control panel for windows? I have only worked with Plesk and I prefer my cPanel (of course thats not available for windows yet).

Please let me know as I will need a windows reseller solution soon and I think that the control panel that a package comes with plays a great part in the decision making.

You should go for Plesk if you dont have experience of working with H-Sphere. Plesk and H-Sphere are very stable and H-Sphere offers more features but it takes time to understand H-Sphere and installation of H-Sphere is the most difficult thing.

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What about HELM? http://helm.webhostautomation.com/

This has been discussed plenty. Its whatever you can "grasp" and appreciate. Hsphere is Superb, But Helm has jumped in leaps and bounds as well. Never really spent too much time with HC, HA, or Plesk for that matter. But any of these you/your clients feel comfotable with is what will count.

We use Helm ourselves, been extremely please with it

As far as I know, H-Sphere needs to be running on a Linux box, though it can have Windows in its cluster.

Originally posted by coreybryant
We use Helm ourselves, been extremely please with it

you need to purchase license for other products such as MSSQL, .NET ASP etc.. ? or all included?

I have both H-Sphere (mainly for Windows hosting) and Plesk for Windows (7.0.3->7.5.1).

Here are a few points I have toward both panels,

(1) HSphere, been using for almost 3 years
- very stable and hardly any major problems
- developers constantly doing bugfix's and enhancments
- good/fast support
- extensive manual/knowledge base/documentations
- quite helpful forum
- reasonable licensing fee

(2) started using Plesk for Windows 7.0.3 early this year
- the interface is cleaner, simpler to use for clients
- lack so many popular features until the recent 7.5.1 release
- plenty of bugs in 7.5.1 (clam, backup, stats, slow interface)
- support from SW-Soft is for extra fees after initial 30 days
- addon's (email antivirus, webbuilder) are for extra fees
- lack of manual/knowledge base/documentations
- had to rely on their forum (few posts, or posts unanswered) for support
- slow release of updates/enhancement

Originally posted by Bashar
you need to purchase license for other products such as MSSQL, .NET ASP etc.. ? or all included?

Helm, unlike other control panels, doesn't restrict you to using a single mail server, or a single DNS server, etc. The choice is there for you to use a wide range of different products that integrate with Helm. You can choose products that you pay for (MS SQL, Merak Mail, Serv-U FTP, etc) but you can instead use free products (MS DNS, MS FTP, MySQL, MailEnable, etc) that work just as well. The ASP.Net framework is downloadable for free, if I recall correctly.

That is correct. The .NET framework comes free with Windows. Helm has MSDE already so you actually do not need the MSSQL license.

We use MS DNS, Serv-U for the FTP - Helm does make it pretty easy to set everything up, that's for sure

Originally posted by Corey Bryant
That is correct. The .NET framework comes free with Windows. Helm has MSDE already so you actually do not need the MSSQL license.

We use MS DNS, Serv-U for the FTP - Helm does make it pretty easy to set everything up, that's for sure



They need extra license for remote SQL and Mail servers. That is stupid. :angry:

How so?

Ensim do the same thing and their unlimited account licences are way more expensive than Helm's.
Plesk do the same thing, and call it Plesk Expand.
H-Sphere charge per customer account, and have a setup fee.

Each control panel has different pricing schemes, so you need to choose the one that suits you, along with the panel that you feel is best for your business.

I just started hosting and am using h-sphere. I really like it so far, but it does have its quirks - which are probably just from my inexperience, so I am learning as I go. But it is easy to use, easy to maneuver, and there is a lot of support documentation to go with it, which is good.