I've seen a lot of stories in regard to this or that control panel being the best, or the most user-friendly, or the most Bang for da Buck.

But....

Does anyone have experience in changing control panels? Are certain control panels a horror to remove in favor of another?

Part of my question resides in the fact that H-Sphere seems to be really good for higher end hosting, server management and billing, but the literature implies that you should really begin using it with three servers. But three dedicated up-front is quite a commitment.

If one were to start up with a single dedicated with, say, CPanel/WHM, would he regret it later when moving to H-Sphere. IOW, when you have a control panel, are you married to it?

H-Sphere will work fine with one server. Just you will outgrow fairly quickly.

As to changing panels. Any cases I've seen of that have been very problematic. People just don't like change, so you must educate and handle very carefully. There will always be some customers who wish you hadn't. So, I would think carefully at the outset.

As a matter of personal experience, when acquiring companies we have always left the existing control panels in place if they were any of the major panels. If the company used a custom panel or webmin or no panel then we could legitimately enhance their service. As we started offering a different panel to new customers (example: acquired Plesk, we started offering CPanel to new customers), we allowed old customers to switch if they desired, but never forced them to.

We just go to great lengths not to disrupt things and I would advise you to do the same. Even if you move customers to a better panel, some will be upset.

We faced a similar decision a few months ago. We had all of our clients on cPanel (which we were beginning to outgrow) and chose to migrate them to H-Sphere. It was extremely time consuming and very problematic, but H-Sphere was worth the effort.

As Incognito mentioned, H-Sphere will run fine on one server, however, since H-Sphere is a java servlet, it can be very resource intensive and you won't be able to fit many clients on the first server.


PSoft has been very willing to help with any migration of services from one server to another. I'd never go back to cPanel.

ZeonHost,

How do your clients like the CP that comes with H-Sphere?

We're migrating some customers from ensim to h sphere right now. Its not easy but with psofts help it is working out rather well. We gave each of our current clients the option to switch, most chose to switch since the h sphere control panel is far in away superior to ensims.

So far we have had nothing but good things said about h sphere from our clients.

Originally posted by Everyday
We gave each of our current clients the option to switch, most chose to switch since the h sphere control panel is far in away superior to ensims.How do you deal with the customers who don't want to switch?

I assume you can't run Ensim and H-sphere on the same server.

No you can't. We have a new cluster of servers for the h sphere customers. We are going to keep the ensim servers and condense the customers into a workable amount for each remaining server.

After ensim offers their new reseller system we will offer it as well as dedicated and VPS.

H Sphere does not have dedicated support yet, once they do we'll offer it as well. Having more than one control panel option will allow us to cater to a larger amount of potential customers. We may even add plesk soon since the ensims billing modules will control it as well.

rapidtransit,

Our clients love H-Sphere, even more than cPanel. I'll admit, it can be overwhelming at first, but it gives them support for multiple domains on an account, which is probably one of the greatest features it offers.

I think one of the clients posted a poll on our forums (down now for a server migration) asking whether they liked H-Sphere better, 20 of them did, only 1 didn't.

Matt / ZeonHost - how good do you find h-sphere is for resellers?

Some of them are overwhelmed at first. I've made a word document that is a step by step on how to setup everything for them and that has helped immensely. After a day or two the are very familiar with the cp, this works out well since it takes a day or two for the DNS to propogate.

So far we have had only good replies from all the customer, resellers/shared. ITs a great control panel!

Personally, I don't like the approach PSoft took for resellers. The resellers can't resell your plans, but instead can resell your resources. It's extremely difficult to explain to a potential client just how it works.

The resellers get very confused when they see the control panel, I end up usually giving them a hour-long walkthrough of how to do everything (since most fail to read the manual we send them). I'll admit it's a powerful control panel, and most of them like it after a few weeks, but it's a very difficult start for a new reseller.

Originally posted by ZeonHost
The resellers get very confused when they see the control panel, I end up usually giving them a hour-long walkthrough of how to do everything (since most fail to read the manual we send them). I'll admit it's a powerful control panel, and most of them like it after a few weeks, but it's a very difficult start for a new reseller. Can't the resellers set up their own plans, like under CPanel?

Another question. Site Studio is included. Is this a good value-added item for selling your web services? Looking at the demo, I thought it might frustrate some users and generate support tickets.

Site Studio is a little buggy but it is a great program. Many of our customers use it and we market it specifically in some plans.

As far as resellers we like the fact that we can sell them bulk space and bandwidth and they can make up their own plans and prices. We don't just sell them resources. Many of them may charge differently for some options than others. We've found that most resellers want some ability to customize and h sphere allows them to do that.

Changing control panels on a server can be a very arduous process. Most control panels "take over" the system configuration and change things to work with their program. Removing the panel from the system can create all sorts fo problems with configurations. The best way to change control panels is to get a new server, or reformat.

That's why we went with a complete new install. It made it much easier. H Sphere needs multiple servers to work correctly anyway so we got three and tried it out. It's a little more cost at first but the expandability and integration is worth it.

Yes, we did the same. We moved clients to new H-Sphere servers to prevent compatibility issues.