I dont know if this has been done before, but I'd like to do it anyway.

What is everyone's favourite control panel for a VPS here.

Post your reason(s) why when you vote.

Cheers

One control panel you forgot is HELM. Its one of the best CPs for windows.


Ryan

Ah I knew I forgot something, moderators, could you add this option in?

Cheers

I would say it depends a lot on what its being used for and from what perspective. IMHO there is a difference for whats would be best for users and administrators.

thats why i said post the reasons why you like using it when you vote ;). I voted for plesk because its simple and it just works. Looks a lot more professional to show clients as opposed to cPanel.

cPanel is the best in my opinion. Simple to use and it looks good.

Id have to go with cPanel.
I believe cPanel is widely used between the majority of web hosting companies. In addition, its very user friendly.

cPanel is the best choice because it the major control panel of today's hosting industry. However, with that said, that does not in any way mean it's the best in terms of quality. I have used all control panels mentioned except ensim, and all have their weakpoints and strongpoints. But as a host, due to the popular demand, the safe choice would be to go with cPanel.

i've used both Cpanel and Plesk.
i think Cpanel is more convenient to me, there are many convenient tools or functions i can use.

I simply do not understand the popularity of cpanel. Out of all the CP's I have seen cPanel has the most bugs as well. From what I have seen H-Sphere is highly superior to all other control panels.

H-Sphere offers clustering, allowing to use different servers for database, mail, namesevrers, etc. H-Sphere offers management for multiple servers from one control panel. H-Sphere has integrated billing, accounting, and a support desk.

How can cPanel compete with those major shotcomings? cPanel is simply not made for anything more than a single server setup. I have also found cPanel to be no more user friendly than H-Sphere and cpanel does offer more features and flexibility than cPanel, having the billing built in helps greatly.

We do offer cPanel on VPS and dedicated accounts, simply because it is so frequently requested, I just have no idea why. The only advantage I see it having is that it seems customers are familiar with it. it can't be that hard to transition... If anyone can find any more advantages please tell me...

Note: H-Sphere is coming with a built-in Fantastico like feature now, though it is technically still in release candidate 2, but should be in the full release shortly. And you don't need additional licensing, it is included....

I have experience of Plesk, H-Sphere and cPanel. I would say they appeal to a slightly different market. cPanel appeals to techs whereas Plesk appeals more to non-techy people. For that reason we chose Plesk for our servers. H-Sphere would appeal to hosts more interested in multi-level resellers and automated hosting account management. We have used Plesk for years tried out H-Sphere when we put in a bunch of new servers. We were trying to centralize control and spread services over multiple boxes which is a strong point of H-Sphere (separate DB, mail, web servers etc.). Even though we had H-Sphere installed by the company, it never seemed to work properly. The documentation is vast, but the product is not intuitive and in the end we went back to Plesk and added Plesk Expand.

My only gripes with Plesk are that Expand is a pretty shallow tool at the moment in terms of its features, and that a client login is not a central thing - its still a server login, even if you log in via the central Expand client login page. I am sure all this will change in future - Expand is improving with every release.

Originally posted by cllarky
I have experience of Plesk, H-Sphere and cPanel. I would say they appeal to a slightly different market. cPanel appeals to techs whereas Plesk appeals more to non-techy people. For that reason we chose Plesk for our servers. H-Sphere would appeal to hosts more interested in multi-level resellers and automated hosting account management. We have used Plesk for years tried out H-Sphere when we put in a bunch of new servers. We were trying to centralize control and spread services over multiple boxes which is a strong point of H-Sphere (separate DB, mail, web servers etc.). Even though we had H-Sphere installed by the company, it never seemed to work properly. The documentation is vast, but the product is not intuitive and in the end we went back to Plesk and added Plesk Expand.

My only gripes with Plesk are that Expand is a pretty shallow tool at the moment in terms of its features, and that a client login is not a central thing - its still a server login, even if you log in via the central Expand client login page. I am sure all this will change in future - Expand is improving with every release.

Just wondering, what issues did you have with H-Sphere and what exactly do you feel is not intuative about it? I'm just wondering as I am interested in other peoples' experiences with H-Sphere since we have been using it for years without an issue.

We set up a test system with three new servers, all RHEL3. We had issues with DNS replication from day one.

The biggest problem trying to use it was that it was difficult to tell what level of access you were logged in as - Admin vs reseller vs user. The admin looked like the reseller and having come from Plesk 6 it was ugly. There was also no mouseover hints like Plesk and no context-sensitive help.

From memory I think it was H-Sphere 2.0 but I have just looked at the demo and it still looks pretty much the same.

Coming from Plesk, I never properly got to grips with the admin levels in H-Sphere. I guess Plesk is a simpler control panel but the designers have gone to great lengths to make it obvious what you have to do to operate it. I have never needed to consult the documentation with Plesk. With H-Sphere its a must.

We were at the point of flying someone in to teach us how to properly set up and admin H-Sphere, but decided in the end to invest in Plesk because its so much more intuitive. Of course we then had to license Modernbill as well.

We felt that although H-Sphere looks cheaper on paper, the additional investment in training and learning the product makes it more expensive.

Hope that helps.

I myself prefer cPanel. The reason being, that whilst the account admin is not quite as good as other CP's the client control panel is pretty nice and feature full. This makes its easy to admin individual websites and in my experience keeps the customers happy.

Also I have used the plesk client control panel, and I absolutely hate it. Even when I wasn't very experienced I found that plesk just didn't offer the features I wanted.

Certainly with things like backups, apache redirects and the like cPanel makes it easy.

We are used to working with the vhosts.conf files within the virtual domains to add apache directives. I would never be comfortable editing directives through a control panel. I have seen too many apache servers die when editing directives via Webmin in the past when it blindly applies the config!

If you want to never speak to your customers then cPanel is good and cheap. Likewise with H-Sphere if you want setup and billing to manage itself. It all depends on the type of service you are offering.

PLESK is my favourite. We use it for VPS as well. ( Virtuozzo )

Originally posted by cllarky
cPanel appeals to techs whereas Plesk appeals more to non-techy people.
Huh? More like Cpanel appeals to wannabe techies that uses CPs to do everything. ;)

Hsphere for me, & Plesk. Like how Plesk don't mess with many core stuff like Cpanel, leave some core stuff for the admin to manage.

Th4r

PS: sorry, my first post, so no offence & just some opinions. :P

The reason why people love plesk is because everything "Just Works" IMO. It really doesnt require much help at all.

I just was able to do the demo of H-Sphere and that looks extremely promising but I think it has a bit too much "Web Hosting Company Management" features for what I need.

cPanel gives clients too many options I think. All most of my clients want to do is check webmail (for which plesk automatically creates http://webmail.domain.com - extremely useful) and maybe add email addresses and maybe even check their stats (plesk creates http://domain.com/webstat automatically also - which is also extremely useful). I dont want my users installing bulletin boards and chat servers and all the other stuff cPanel has. And yes I know you can stop access to that if you buy RVSkin, but i dont think i should pay for a feature that should already be there.

I skimmed a bit, please excuse me if I say something that has already been stated.

I 100% agree with Karl, what is with the hype over cpanel? I like Plesk the best. It makes a linux server look like it has Win XP on it, and clients love that. Plesk also looks much cleaner and has a ton more addons.
I think Plesk has a much cleaner layout as well.

To each his/her own, however. :)

Cpanel gives you full control over everything! you can work in the control panel or out of it. I has many commen fixes in the /scripts directory. I think it is really ment for people who know what they are doing and thats all. It is not made for the beginner. It has to many buttons they can click with out knowing what they are doing.

My choice is Directadmin. It has tons of features, and is very stable/bugfree. On top of that its very simple to use for those non-techy people, but has all the options that the more advanced people want.

Hsphere is also a good panel, from an admin perspective its absolutely amazing, everything all in one is a great way to go. Although from an end users perspective it never really impressed me, thats the reason I didn't use it.

Plesk, exellent panel, but as mentioned it appeals more to less techy people. Only have basic experience with it though so I can't really comment. But from what I have seen its a great panel.

Cpanel, lots of features but plenty of bugs. Its not nearly as nice to admin as a directadmin installation. The seperation of cpanel and whm is also something that bugs me alot. Otherwise its ok, I think it has a much steeper learning curve then most panels, but it does get the job done.

When it comes down to it most users really don't use the control panel that much. I've run one website for about two and a half years and in that time have accessed the control panel maby 2 or 3 times for that website. Even while developing a large website I basically only need a control panel to setup email and mysql databases.

These threads should be titled "Which CP do you prefer (or use)" but not "Best Control Panel". In order to choose the best, you need to have tested them all. Who among us has worked with all CPs mentioned?

I have worked with 3: CPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk
CPanel gives you most control over the server.
DirectAdmin is fast and has less features but no important feature is missing.
Plesk looks visually good but if you want to work with it, make several liters (or gallons) of coffee. Loading a page takes ages. And performing any function demands several page loads.

I dropped Plesk after 1 week. I dropped DirectAdmin after 3 months (not due to problems with DA but due to problems with the server). My cpanel servers are up and running.

kosmo
(biased due to cpanel software development)

Originally posted by u2mike
My choice is Directadmin. It has tons of features, and is very stable/bugfree. On top of that its very simple to use for those non-techy people, but has all the options that the more advanced people want.

Hsphere is also a good panel, from an admin perspective its absolutely amazing, everything all in one is a great way to go. Although from an end users perspective it never really impressed me, thats the reason I didn't use it.

Plesk, exellent panel, but as mentioned it appeals more to less techy people. Only have basic experience with it though so I can't really comment. But from what I have seen its a great panel.

Cpanel, lots of features but plenty of bugs. Its not nearly as nice to admin as a directadmin installation. The seperation of cpanel and whm is also something that bugs me alot. Otherwise its ok, I think it has a much steeper learning curve then most panels, but it does get the job done.

When it comes down to it most users really don't use the control panel that much. I've run one website for about two and a half years and in that time have accessed the control panel maby 2 or 3 times for that website. Even while developing a large website I basically only need a control panel to setup email and mysql databases.

I have used H-Sphere, cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin

H-Sphere - one of the best CPs - certainly for hosting automation. Billing & ticket support buit-in.

C-Panel - confusing for resellers - didn't like how it handles add-on domains.

Plesk - worked okay, but didn't impress me My version didn't have the "application vault" working. Lacked some of the features of other CPs &Has no inbuilt billing. Plan management is not as detailed as other CPs.

DirectAdmin - Don't like how it handles email forwards or add-on domains. Its simple, but no inbuilt billing or support features.

Originally posted by kosmo
These threads should be titled "Which CP do you prefer (or use)" but not "Best Control Panel". In order to choose the best, you need to have tested them all. Who among us has worked with all CPs mentioned?

I have worked with 3: CPanel, DirectAdmin and Plesk
CPanel gives you most control over the server.
DirectAdmin is fast and has less features but no important feature is missing.
Plesk looks visually good but if you want to work with it, make several liters (or gallons) of coffee. Loading a page takes ages. And performing any function demands several page loads.

I dropped Plesk after 1 week. I dropped DirectAdmin after 3 months (not due to problems with DA but due to problems with the server). My cpanel servers are up and running.

kosmo
(biased due to cpanel software development)

I have used all of them.. We used to run shared hosting on Plesk, now we use H-Sphere. We sell and support cPanel, Direct Admin, and Plesk on our dedicated and VPS machines and are thus familiar with all those as well.

cPanel gives you the most control? Then show me how to use cPanel to use a separate server as a database server and then another server as the mail server... H-Sphere gives you that ability. H-Sphere lets you do everything a control panel should let you do. Anything more should be handled directly on the server by a network admin, as cpanel shows you be frequently having issues when you try to mess with such things through the CP. Upgrade programs and cPanel stops working, the extensive list of scripts they have to fix common problems should tell you enough to keep away from cPanel. No proper control panel should need scripts to fix it's common problems! How can you commend cPanel on having those scripts when the problems those scripts resolve should never happen in the first place?

Originally posted by adb22791
I 100% agree with Karl, what is with the hype over cpanel? I like Plesk the best. It makes a linux server look like it has Win XP on it, and clients love that. Plesk also looks much cleaner and has a ton more addons.
I think Plesk has a much cleaner layout as well.

To each his/her own, however. :)

I don't know about hype but all the data I have seen indicates that Cpanel is the most popular control panel. People are used to it and from an enduser aspect it is pretty easy to follow. Like both Plesk and Cpanel but for marketability we do much or our work with Cpanel (with Plesk soon to follow).

Yeah i really dont know why they added in the loading screen into Plesk 7.5. It just adds to the already painful loading times. Thats probably the only gripe i have with plesk.

Most comfy with CPanel.

Hi,

Actually I only use cPanel therefore I cannot provide any comments on the others.

I do feel that there are two many features for cPanel - the icons fill up the whole screen! If you ever have a want-to-know-all client before, you should know the pain!

As a windows hosting admin...HELM was our only choice. Yes it lacks features....but being part of the HELM community, which is like one big family is better than waiting days for support from the other control panel companies. We have multiple servers and HELM allows us to easily access, control, add, remove, and change server cofigurations with a few simple clicks. Helm is getting new features everyday and will one day be in my opinion the best windows control panel out there.

Its just my 2 cents, so don't take it to heart and post something trying to persue my opinion to the other cp's...as i know the others have features HELM doesn't.

For me it's Cpanel, sure it's got its issues, but seems to have gotten a lot better these days. Haven't had any major dramas for over a year. Mind you, it's been a while since I tried the other control panels...

I appreciate hearing peoples opinions on why it works for them, because at least if i go a bit bonkers one day and decide to start using windows for my hosting, i'll remember say, marlintodd told me HELM is quite good ;) - so i'll give it a try.

Greetings:

We voted for H-Sphere since it is the only one on the list that provides complete hosting automation.

Thank you.

If I had thought of it at the time I could have included HSPComplete, that does what you describe dynamicnet.

H-Sphere is a best one has powerful control of whole hosting platform.
You can run from one server your entire cluster, you don’t have to install it an each server.
H-Sphere has a powerful control of Windows, Unix Servers. In same control panel you can have Shared, Reseller, VPS and E-mail hosting. You can’t go wrong with that. Plus they most secured and stable compare to cPanel. Not a lot of control panels can support Trustix 2.2 ES OS. H-Sphere was a first one who supports them. And Trustix is most secured Linux out there today.
And the best things they support are always helpful compare to cPanel or DirectAdmin.

As the result suggests and shows the popularity of the cPanel, we may say that cPanel is atleast a clear winner in our WHT community ;)

One thing I think for cpanel from normal hosting users point of view is that there is a lot of information available in forums and on the web, if any problem or any bug hits the cpanel servers.

cPanel/WHM for me. I've used Plesk and DirectAdmin and found them to be lacking the features of cPanel.

cPanel has bugs, but i guess i just know my way around them.

I've never used H-Sphere... Maybe Karl can hook me up with a license on one of my Steadfast boxes :-)