I've been a DirectAdmin customer for about a year. My first DA experiences began when I ordered a new dedicated server... and I was sick of cPanel's buggyness. I thought, "Hey, a few hundred for a lifetime license, awesome!"

That's something I hope never to repeat.

HOSTING - Fast forward one month. Update problems. Apache was completely *reinstalled* without my knowing. Configs and everything were entirely reset. I can't even host users on a shared IP without a DirectAdmin "This Domain Is Hosted on a Shard IP" page coming up in place of the user's *domain*. The domain that they *expect their site to appear on.*

Subdomains don't even work properly. During the first three months, any users I put on a subdomain had their sites skipped over, all their users being directed to the domain. They also had a nice little Shared IP page whenever somebody could actually view their files via HTTP.

EMAIL - Exim is an entirely different ordeal. The DA implementation of Exim is about as useful as an 8086. I've received hundreds of complaints regarding users' inabilities to receive incoming mail... on the other hand, they could send with no trouble at all. I attempted to contact DirectAdmin regarding this issue, however, every time I contacted them, be it via phone, email, forums, the responses were either nill or incomplete. On the forums, their "moderators" would post one response with small bits of advice, and completely ignore me afterwards! Sitting here eight months later, my replies have yet to receive responses.

MySQL - Thankfully DA hasn't tampered with MySQL that much. However, it's pointless when you have no front-end (Websites that *WORK*) to use SQL for.

The only successful feature of DirectAdmin, in my tried and tested opinion, is the system tools menu on the administration interface - I know it works, because I've made more than my fair share of trips to the "Service Monitor" menu, and I've given the "Restart" option a good left-click beating with my mouse.

My lesson: "You get what you pay for."

DirectAdmin overall ratings:

Features: 2/10 (Comes with services installer for easy setup, automatically installs services... you have absolutely no choice over services, on the other hand. And the config settings are horrendous, but those can be changed.)

Support: 0/10 (Virtually no support. Forget MCAs and hosting with a DirectAdmin-based platform.)

Interoperability: 1/10 (Don't plan on freedom of choice.)

Appearance (Not that important): 8/10 (A few good skins available, compatability neither guaranteed nor likely, so get ready to tinker.)

Price: 5/10 (Budget panel or not, the sheer buggyness of this control panel overrides the price entirely. I would sooner buy from SCO than pay for another worthless license.)

Thumb Rating: Two Thumbs Down :mad:

Are you quite sure the fault lies with DA, and not with the workman in this instance?

DA excepts to install on a clean system. They're explicit about that, so when DA installed all its stuff, you shouldn't have expected your existng sites and configuratino to remain? No panel handles that (except webmin, and that's not exactly a hosting panel). So that part, I think you're at fault. If you wanted your sites to remain, you would have had to make a backup, then install your new panel, and then copy the right directories to the new places. (eg. in plesk sites were placed in /home/httpd/<domain>/httpdocs. In DA its /home/<user>/domains/<domain>/public_html).

Config is a similar issue - DA cannot work with just any config! You would have had to make the right changes to the config files (eg your virtual host configs would need to be copied to the new directory). As for global conf changes - you'd have had to make them yourself too. This is obvious, 'how-can-it-work-any-other-way' type stuff.

However... some of your other points are valid. DAs support does involve a lot of 'visit the forum', where a moderator will tell you you should have searched the forum before posting, and that you're a fool for not knowing the answer already. Documentation on various DA notes is a hit-and-miss affair, especially if you don't know something exists before you look for it!

Exim isn't my favourite MTA, but it does work. I don't know why you had a problem with it, but I think paid support should have got it fixed.

In short, I think your expectiations were too high, and you will be burned in exactly the same way by any other panel you choose to install.

Since we support most popular control panels I would never express an opionion about one control panel over the other. I will say, however, that as a software developer and someone with an understanding of how a control panel must interact with other software/tools on a platform it is evident to me why the control panel needs to be installed on a 'virgin' system so that the control panel can configure everything and is dealing with 'known quantities'.

It would be nice if this were not the case but software such as apache, named and exim just don't have nice little API interfaces to let them keep an arms length relationship with the control panel. To be honest I am actually surprised the whole thing works at all but clearly it does if you let the control panel be in control.

Wow- my experience with DA has been exactly the opposite of yours. I have not had many problems with it, and when I have, I've found DA support to be absolutely outstanding (way above and beyond what I would expect, to be honest). They've done things for me, including fixing things that _I_ messed up on my server, that are certainly out of scope for their support. Too bad it didn't work out for you.

Same here, We have many DA VPS's and DA servers and never have an issue with any of them, IMO DA is 10x better than cpanel and ALOT less buggy. We have not yet tested thier support, as we have not needed to yet.

Scooter

Wow- my experience with DA has been exactly the opposite of yours. I have not had many problems with it, and when I have, I've found DA support to be absolutely outstanding (way above and beyond what I would expect, to be honest). They've done things for me, including fixing things that _I_ messed up on my server, that are certainly out of scope for their support. Too bad it didn't work out for you. I agree. DA is a life and money saver. I find it the best control panel out there! :smash:

Just FYI, DA *was* installed on a completely virgin system. Fresh CentOS 3.3 install, which is now upgraded to 3.5 (or 3.6, I believe).

Just FYI, DA *was* installed on a completely virgin system. Fresh CentOS 3.3 install, which is now upgraded to 3.5 (or 3.6, I believe).
Apache was completely *reinstalled* without my knowing.
:confused:
Anyhow, I have a cpanel server and a DA server. I love DA more than any other cp on the planet considering its just for me and my sites only, Ease of use, simple & fast. I have never had the problems you had mentioned above as of yet and wish you luck with your next cp of choice.
I have cPanel specifically for client demand.

Apache was completely reinstalled during an update, just to clear things up. All of my Apache configs were reset during a DirectAdmin update.

Well, we are very fortunate then. All of our DA servers have been very stable and we have no single major complaints. But then again, we use the default setup on Apache.

I found that the support (John and Mark) are very helpful. You may want to send email to support@directadmin.com. I am sure that they can help you too. All of our support requests have been answered and solved in a very satisfactory manner. I'm impressed and satisfied with both their products and support.

I thought it was fairly well documented that changes to apache configs outside of DA may be overwritten when DA updates. I've never had an issue of DA screwing up its own config with upgrades. Custom apache settings per vhost should be done with the web interface, and changes to the httpd.conf templates should be put in DA's custom/ directories, which are not overwritten by updates.

Having said that, I do use a custom unsupported DA setup (specifically, using MySQL and apache from FreeBSD ports, as well as FastCGI PHP instead of mod_php) on some of my servers and I've never had an issue with DA overwriting my configs with its own when I update. I've had several DA servers over the last year or so and they're much easier to troubleshoot. I've also had far less issues with them than the single CPanel server I've had.

Apache was completely reinstalled during an update, just to clear things up. All of my Apache configs were reset during a DirectAdmin update.

I am afraid that you need to take a look at your box. DA updating is totally different than Apache. The web server is still running with current config when you are updating DA. It should be something wrong in your OS. Did you check the error logs?

DA work fine for me on my FreeBSD 5.3 box at LT.

well i have say that , directadmin is only good as the Admin.

we are running almost 29 DA servers with out problems, sure i ran into a few bugs here or there but fixed it in a heart beat.

What CP comes working 100% out of the box ? none, really you have to put the time into it and try to problem slove yourself. google is your friend :)

DA support i noticed is the best compare to any other i had before, just my .02 cents

running DA from 64bit - 32bit Centos 4.2

I don't agree, DA is being great in my case.

i guess the old saying your mileage may varied still hold trure. whatever panel you use, try it first then see if it work for ya.