Looking into new control systems for future projects as Ensim 3.1 is new and CPANEL has a very good track record has anyone any comments or input that may be useful.

Many Thanks

Chris Hopley

accounts@hostone.co.uk

Hello Chris, may I offer you two pieces of advice,

1)Do research and check out demos to determine if either one of the panels is suitable for you. What is right for someone else may not be right for you.

2)There is a search button at the top right corner, you can find huge amount of useful info this way.

If you still have question after the two steps, you can ask the members of this forum.

Peter

Yes, gather info on both and make the choice based upon what you are looking for.

As for my opinion, it would be a tough choice. I'd go for CPanel if both were the same price, but the monthly charges just turn me off. Ensim on the other hand is cheap and I use it myself at the moment on my server, but I'm affraid I've gone totally off it as it is very restrictive when it comes to keeping things like PHP etc. up to date. I've just come to the conclusion that Ensim just isn't flexible enough for me.

I'll be looking into alternatives within the next few months. H-Sphere has a good chance. Also, if this Neopanel that was under heavy discussion in the offers forum yesterday turns out to be a real and decent product, I'll look into that too. HostGUI is another option, only has the drawback that it only will come with an unlimited licence and I find the $500 a rather hefty charge when I might use it for maybe a maximum of 30 accounts or so. I'm not saying $500 is a bad price, just that for a student that isn't maintaining a server to make money out of it, it is slighly steep.

Will keep an eye open for Ensim reviews, but until then CPANEL seems more like the weapon of choice.

Chris Hopley

accounts@hostone.co.uk

Don't forget to check out HSphere.

HSphere Website (http://www.psoft.net)

I have used Plesk, Cpanel/WHM, and HSphere and my personal preference would be HSphere. Has billing and trouble tickets built in.

Although Cpanel can be a pain in the butt sometimes I would go for it over Ensim anyday. Ensim is scattered all over the place and the interface is confusing. Cpanel is clear and more widely accepted. Go for it!

I really liked HSphere. That's my favorite. Gives customers a lot of customizing abilities, so they don't have to contact the host as much.

CPanel is good too. I see it as a standard.

I'm not a fan of Ensim. Very limited, harder to upgrade. A lot of simple things you still have to contact the host to have done (like cron jobs). But seems to be the cheapest and I see it included free the most with dedicated server packages.

I haven't used Plesk.

ENSIM 3.1
Really well documented
Easily customisable (yea cpanel does have skins)
Great functions

I don't like cpanel however lots of site admins do. They love the features and design. Also easily to mess up cpanel by doing some upgrades.

I prefer ensim 3.1. 3.0 was alright, but now with a reseller cp and if your like me and program a few extra addons like billing, trouble tickets, status, requests, and a few other things, its perfect.

Can we give the control to reseller to add , delete and suspend domain like we can in Cpanel webhost manager in ENSIM

You can do this with ensim 3.1. Ensim 3.0, however, does not support reseller. The reseller feature is something new in 3.1.

Peter

We are using Ensim 3.1 and so far its looking good, a few new extra features than with the 3.0 and I love the resellers bit:)!

I think it's possible that Ensim will become more popular than Cpanel or Hsphere. Why? Ensim also supports Windows and virtual private servers, and CPanel doesnt. Hsphere is just too damn expensive, and I don't think it supports the private server technology, but could be wrong on that.
The only drawback I see to Ensim is the configuration. People say it's hard to uninstall, etc. I've never used Ensim. The only Control Panel I've ever used is ChiaPanel (aka CPanel).

I think you are comparing apple to orange. You should be comparing hsphere to the standalone version of ensim, which isn't much of a comparision.

The serverXchange version of ensim probably beat h-sphere, but the pricing is not the same. From what I heard, it has both onetime fee and recurring payment, so it can get quite expensive.

Ensim standalone doesn't have virtual private server, no billing and tickets, no cross-server management, etc... These are all features of the serverXchange version, and you shouldn't be comparing the hsphere with the standalone version.

Peter

i agree, h sphere beats ensim hands down from a cost stnadpoint to the hosting company. Why pay $15,000 to $20,000 (or whatever ensim is charging now) for serverxchange plus monthly fees, when for less than $500 you can get h sphere with its more features, billing, support desk and far superior support from the makers and no monthly fees.

No there is currently no support for private servers or dedicated with h sphere but it is coming (from what psoft says) this summer.

You can not fairly compare ensim's single server software that is not upgradable to the h sphere platform. A truer comparison would be to serverxchange.

Cpanel is to buggy and to expensive, my $0.02 on that :)

Originally posted by Everyday
You can not fairly compare ensim's single server software that is not upgradable to the h sphere platform. A truer comparison would be to serverxchange.


Yeah, I should've said serverXchange insead of Ensim. Maybe H-Sphere isn't so expensive, after all. I had no idea that serverXchange cost that much. I hope H-Sphere succeeds, so that we don't need extra programs like we do now, such as Ubersmith, PerlDesk or PerlBill, phpManager, etc.

We're looking at a another panel to that looks very interesting. I'll post some comments after we test it out.

Would this be neopanel? Had a talk with them on their forums and it actually sounds very promising...

Nope! Guess again :D :cool:

Next guess would be hostGUI. Those are the only 2 new commercial ones I am aware of being released in the near future. I would like to hear of others though as I want to ditch Ensim for something more flexible...

Originally posted by Everyday
We're looking at a another panel to that looks very interesting. I'll post some comments after we test it out.

Matt,
I noticed your demo is using H-Sphere, how do you like that control panel?

H Sphere is hands down the best panel available today from an end user standpoint. It has the most preinstalled options and flexibility.

The admin side has a few shortcomings, mainly the billing system. They are being addressed right now though.

We are believers in having multiple offerings so we are keeping our options open to offer other panels. For instance in a few weeks you should see ensim and plesk available from us as well as windows hosting. If we find a new a new panel and it is stands up to our tests we might make it available as well.

Originally posted by Everyday
We are believers in having multiple offerings so we are keeping our options open to offer other panels. For instance in a few weeks you should see ensim and plesk available from us as well as windows hosting. If we find a new a new panel and it is stands up to our tests we might make it available as well. Interesting. So when a new customer signs up, do you let them choose which type of server they would like to be on? (I.E. Ensim, plesk, whatever)? If so, I would imagine you would have to explain the benefits/drawbacks of each one to them before they can make an intelligent decision. And even then, they're faced with the same decision that the thread-starter is dealing with.

Also, do you allow customers to switch between your different control panel systems? I can imagine that would be a nightmare unless you had a script to go from X panel to Y panel, Y panel to Z panel, X panel to Z panel and so on. Also, how do you keep your customer database sane? Most of those control panels have built-in customer/billing management systems. Do you use those systems or do you use a separate system that knows how to interact with all of the control panel systems that you use.

I'm not saying that's a bad idea, but from an administrative standpoint, it sounds like it would be a complete nightmare unless you are willing to forego any semblance of automation in your organization. I would be interested to know how you manage customers across three or four or more control panel systems--if you are willing to share, of course.

As we get the other control panels on line we have plans to have a central database that will be updated nightly from each of the cp databases and info centers.

We are using the H Sphere sign up form right now but might switch to a custom one. The others will have a form we make up and will enter manually. This isn't a big deal since we moderate everything anyway, this helps us avoid fraud, spam and chargebacks.

Actually, using the separate control panel billing systems and support ticket systems makes it easier to keep track of customers problems. We know when we get tickets from H Sphere that its an h sphere customer, so we don't have to go look them up.

Its a little more work but everyone wants something different. This way we can offer dedicated machines or shared hosting with ensim, plesk, h sphere when it comes out even c panel (although I detest it). The people who don't care about the control panel or who don't know the difference we put them on H Sphere. It has more options than any of the panels and its more user friendly.

Like I said, its more work but its very nice to offer all the top choices :D

Originally posted by Everyday
Like I said, its more work but its very nice to offer all the top choices :D Fair enough. I can imagine that the clients who have a preference toward a certain control panel certainly appreciate the additional options that you give them. I'm sure many companies will value your opinions, since you are one of the few people who can speak from experience on all of the systems that you use.

Keep up the good work!

Thanks Matt :) Just in case anyone is wondering we are finishing the "other" control panel pages for our site over the next week or so and they should be up. I only say since I got a few "nice" emails saying we were full of **** and only offer H Sphere.

Matt, do you have a demo of your control panel? I see it is custom from looking at your site.

Originally posted by Everyday
Matt, do you have a demo of your control panel? I see it is custom from looking at your site. Well, our shared hosting control panel's backend is actually based on Cpanel (modified very heavily). You can get a demo version of the standard Cpanel control panel from www.cpanel.net. If you are interested in purchasing Cpanel licenses, we can provide you with such, but we can't provide the control panel that we offer to our shared hosting customers, as it is too heavily integrated with our other systems.

Feel free to email me directly if you have further questions.

Originally posted by Everyday
H Sphere is hands down the best panel available today from an end user standpoint. It has the most preinstalled options and flexibility.

The admin side has a few shortcomings, mainly the billing system. They are being addressed right now though.

We are believers in having multiple offerings so we are keeping our options open to offer other panels. For instance in a few weeks you should see ensim and plesk available from us as well as windows hosting. If we find a new a new panel and it is stands up to our tests we might make it available as well.

What are the specific problems with Hsphere's billing system?

All of the other is good news, especially about getting Windows. I'm not sure if I'd offer more than 2 different Control Panels, but hey if you can make it work, more power to you.

The way things are arranged and there is some misunderstanding with regards to how credits and debits are shown.

You need to read the manuals throughly or else you could get yourself in a heap of trouble.