Ok guys here is your chance to give us some input! We had been focused on providing really powerful dedicated linux server solutions, and never really paid attention to the entire Hosting Reseller market.

We'd like to creat a product just for you.

So with that, we need few things -

1. Other than CPanel & Plesk does anyone know of a easy to use yet powerful control panel meant for people who'd like to resell hosting on their dedicated server. As it stands we give everyone Webmin which we found to be the easiest to use and most powerful controlpanel but it seems to lack reseller hosting capabilities. So please list whatever other packages you guys know of, or would like to see on our Hosting Server we put together

2. As a Web Hosting seller, what server would you minimally want, we were thinking of a PIII 750 system with 512 Ram and a SCSI drive with optional raid mirroring (great for data protection for your clients)

3rd, How much would you be willing to pay for a system like this, ready for you to sell webhosting on.

Thanks guys! We are trying to be there for you, so help us out too!

We have been building a control panel for our own services for 6 months now, that within the next couple of months we will be releasing as a commercial product, I'm not wanting to advertise on this forum (keeping to the rules etc), suffice to say It will be at least directly comparable to cpanel in terms of features, plus a few more things, and we have taken on board a lot of comments from this forum on what a control panel should do, for further information drop me a mail.

Regards,

Tony Lucas

Side Note: The last time a survey was posted (of sorts), I removed any URL's and the sig. of the poster and no one seemed to complain about it, so this is try number two. As many know, we've had a long standing ban on surveys, but I think this way seems ok.

:( no fair the last time I posted a survey that had nothin to do do with our Web Works it got closed HOW RUDE :) JJK

That as packaged would be absoultley great if it were as low cost as possible without cutting too deeply into proffit.

It would be great if you could create a package that would allow for staggering build up. such as $50 setup and $50 monthly for the first three months, then $100 per month for another three months of service, then the regular price of $165 per month there after.

Or something like it. In any case, it would help the smaller guys to get a good strong userbase.

Also, it would be GREAT if you kept bandwidth costs low and make sure to offer at least 40 gigs to start with. Unfortunatly, it's really not possible to get much going when you are paying a low price and only get 10-15 gigs of bandwidth to use.

This way it allowes the client to gain a user base that will have more of a chance of having the server pay for itself and in turn keeping the customers you have and getting rid of about 35% of the delinquent payments that may normal occur due to insufficient funds.

Making a great control panel I think is a mixture of functionality as well as speed for those quick, hurry and fix me, problems.

Also, making a comprehensive and secure reseller control panel would be great as well. I think that if you base the idea that as you add accounts or upgrade them, you would be charged accordingly. That way it would get rid of the need to limit reseller functions and they can add mySQL db's e-mails, etc. to their clients without the intervention of the admin of the main webhost that is being resold out of.

Making it fast I think will require less usage of graphics, but still keep itlookingnice and easy to use. Plus, you might have selectable skins based on skill level and describe what each skin would do for load times.

Another issue is auto-updates. You may want to figure out a way that when you update the cpanel & whm that it doesn't cause a lot of lag on the network and doesn't interrupt functionality for minutes to hours at a time.

I'll post more as I think of them.

OLM is offering Ensim for their "Web Host Server Environments" (info, pricing and control panel demo at http://www.olmnetworks.com/pages/webhosting.htm ). They also have a starter version called the Reseller Server Environment ( http://www.olmnetworks.com/pages/reseller.htm ) which has similar features but is priced based on usage.

Anyway, the control panels in the demos look very useful...more so than Plesk, but not quite as much as CPanel.

I want NetAdmin, the same thing that Site5 uses...

nice i-face, tempaltes (to customize look, etc)

And get Akopia shopping cart.

IMHO, CPanel is the way to go. Will you be offering CPanel in the future?

Hello,

some Day's ago someone postet a Link to a new free Controll-Panel but you need for every Virtual-Domain a IP-Adress (that say's the Post):

http://www.freevsd.org/

What I for Control-Panel has see is that CPanel3 is looking very good but I have no experience with it.


Originally posted by RackLocation1


1. Other than CPanel & Plesk does anyone know of a easy to use yet powerful control panel meant for people who'd like to resell hosting on their dedicated server. As it stands we give everyone Webmin which we found to be the easiest to use and most powerful controlpanel but it seems to lack reseller hosting capabilities. So please list whatever other packages you guys know of, or would like to see on our Hosting Server we put together

We have actually decided to build our own powerful 3 level control panel system. It will allow you to lease a dedicated server and either provide webhosting and control panels to go withthe accounts, or on a more powerful level actually allow you to resell you people who want to sell hosting providing you with a control panel, the resellers with control panels & the end user a control panel, we are going to make it very powerful yet simple and easy to use.

What are the core functions of a control panel system that you guys feel make a control panel system top notch? Also does this sound like a good idea?

Cpanel looks promising, but $199 a month is ridiculous, in mine and many other hoster's minds.


They really need to go the way Plesk is, flat server license fee

Originally posted by fibroptikl
I want NetAdmin, the same thing that Site5 uses...

nice i-face, tempaltes (to customize look, etc)

And get Akopia shopping cart.

That's CPanel :)

Originally posted by PepsiCoke
Cpanel looks promising, but $199 a month is ridiculous, in mine and many other hoster's minds.


They really need to go the way Plesk is, flat server license fee

$199 a month for CPanel (AND!!!) Webhost Manager is not rediculous. Did you ever try it? I thought it would be too..until I tried it and it's great.

Take a look at the features in WHM and create your panel around those. The more features the better.

When do you plan on having this control panel ready??

i really want to try it but i am just waiting for a total solution package

Automated Setup
Control Panel
Auto Billing

Tabernack we are actually working on it as I write this.. it should be really cool, and rather powerful. I'll keep you guys posted, and as always any inpput is appreciated, as this is for you guys.

Hi Racklocation :)

Let me know if you need a guinea pig, I would gladly install it on my server I currently have with you. I look forward to seeing a demo!!

Hi,

We are just about done a tie-in to the WHM / Cpanel3 software which pretty much picks up where that package currently leaves off with reguards to support, account management, and billing management. It should be really hardcore stuff when it's done... I'm getting anxious!

-Brendan
(this post is okay right?)

Since Racklocation1 is looking for something for their servers (I assume you aren't going to be giving this to anyone once it is completed), I don't see how it pertains to the discussion.

Originally they asked for *other* server control panels, other than cpanel and plesk, but I think that got lost somewhere. You can email Pepsicoke directly.

Another good control panel pointed out in another thread:
Personal Control Panel (http://www.communitech.net/hosting/virtual/features/advanced/pcp4/) at Communitech.net.

From the looks of it, Hostrocket is on the right path, will this be offered to other hosting providers?

mkaufman,

NetAdmin and Cpanel are not the same thing. If you get a server with Cpanel and try to clone the NetAdmin interface and features, I'm afraid you will be sorely disappointed. :)

As I've said many times before, NetAdmin adds a rich new feature suite to Cpanel (10,000+ lines of code), and is only available at Site5.

Currently, we don't even package it with our dedicated servers, so the only way to utilize it is with a shared hosting account.

Regards,
Matt
mlightner@site5.com

Matt Kaufman:

I know that there is a difference between CPanel and NetAdmin; I was and have been with Site5 before. Me and Matt have talked for hours upon hours, and he's even showed me the system.

Yes, unfortunatley you have to get on the shared server environment to use NetAdmin, but the $100 Setup Fee, and 3 Months at a time hosting prohibit me from doing so.


[Edited by fibroptikl on 02-10-2001 at 01:36 AM]

$100 setup fee?!?

You must have us confused with someone else. We have never had a setup fee that large. :D

Matt

http://www.site5.com/programs/resellers/pricing.html

It says so right there. I was talking about reselling all along.

That's just a tad too much for me, and the 3 months at a time...

73218345

Ohh.. I see what you meant. That's the reseller license fee.

You get NetAdmin with any hosting account though, not just a reseller account.

Matt

Yes, but I need to have alot of my sites on there, along with clients sites. I would like to have the features that a reseller has and so forth.

I'm not gonna buy 6 WebExec Accounts.

AK!

I'm unable to find any information about communitech's control pabel, called "Personal Control Panel 4.0 xl"

But it's all over the FREEKIN' internet! Is it a proprietary product, or something I can buy out of box.

I can't find a place to get more info! URL's seriously appreciated.

-j

Far as I know, it's theirs. Get it at Communitech only...

I just talked to them this morning. The problem is this:

1. They offer dedicated servers, but you can't get their control panel software, so it's just like any other host

2. You can't buy their control panel software, because it's not a packaged product. They're coming out with it as a packaged product "in the next 6 months." Everybody is always coming out with their product in the "next six months." We'll see. Very few companies deliver.

3. You can resell, but their discounts are pathetic! Considering the margins that are possible in a large hosting installation, a 30-40% discount (at MOST) on already inflated (read, "full") prices is out of control.

I'm sincerely curious about the ORIGNAL TOPIC of this thread! __What is another control panel?__ Here is what I have found:

1. http://www.sphera.com
Nice control panel, but it's Java based (ak, annoying!), which means it's not web scriptable and it doesn't look like it's "there" yet. It has all kinds of APIs, and the license is about $400 a box, so it's reasonable. It looks like they might be going somewhere promising, if they can take their heads out of you-know-where and build a reasonable client interface & billing integration.

2. http://www.ensim.com
A full featured hosting dedicated appliance. I actually have a meeting with them tomorrow to look over their product. It's promising, but it looks expensive.

3. http://www.cpanel3.com
The web site sucks, but folks say all kinds of nice pleasant things about this thing. It looks like it sucks a lot, but we'll see.

4. http://www.Communitech.net
I think I've already covered the problems with this thing. However, they do have NT control panels, which is a HUGE bonus if you want to capture windows customers

5. http://www.alabanza.com
Really nice site, but take it from me -- alabanza's service SUCKS! They've got reliability problems, and their lead salesguy can't even figure out how to call people back. Nice service on paper, but if you try to build anything on them, you're screwed in the long run.

6. Others...
I've seen a few others, but they seem to mostly suck!

Only Alabanza has billing integration, so you're due a pain in the arse setting that up.

Here is article on hosting automation:
http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2663759,00.html

I'd also check out the hosting automation documentation from sun and netscape. Interesting reading.

Now, that all said (and I think it answer's the poor guys freekin questions), what else is out there? Is there and end to end provider of billing and hosting? Something like Alabanza, but extensible enough to provide enterprise hosting service and support a real VAR market? I can't find it.

Jeez.

So, post your 2 cents, k?

Thanks!

J

For those of you interested there is an Open Source Control Panel in Development. It will be Linux/NT compatible and able to install onto existing servers. We have started a new Source Forge site to assist in coordinating the project. If interested check it out here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/ngcpanel/

We are still looking for people to help on the project as well.

Chuck

I was just wondering how it went with Ensim? I contacted Alabanza and they replied instantly... Ill take your word for it though, too often then not, people notice bad customer support when the see it. I am looking for the complete package... You know, server, billing, automation, control panels, easy admin interface etc... Alabanza so far seems like the only one... If you have any suggestions... Please let me know..

Thank You
Hickster:confused: