How would you rate Direct Admin compared to CPanel, Plesk, and Webmin?

Direct Admin seems awfully simple and concerns me it may be missing features, but I have seen a few people mention how much they love Direct Admin. I am looking for a control panel to manage my 10 or so websites I manage. I am very familar with Plesk and CPanel.

I tend to like Plesk for the look and feel, and tend to dislike CPanel. But I haven't really spent all that much time trying to learn the interface to CPanel and what it can do.

I have considered just sticking with editing apache files directly and doing everything that way, but I would rather make things easier to work with.

As far as I have heard, Direct Admin has lower overhead than Plesk and CPanel?

DA is simple and neat to use, add on Installatron, Sitezen and some plugins for say Tomcat etc it still has much lower overheads and is very easy to use still.

DirectAdmin is affordable, light and yet accomplishes what most would ever need.
cPanel is bloated. No Plesk experience.

A++.

why dont you try out their demo?
http://directadmin.com/demo.html

why dont you try out their demo?
http://directadmin.com/demo.html


I have, it looks pretty nice considering how simple it is, but it is no where near enough to compare against people with years of experience with all these panels, that's why I asked.

Please read these posts:

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=614750
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=618619

DA is a very nice panel and the pricing structure makes it even that much nicer. As for features look at how many don't work in cPanel and then compare it to the ones that actually do work in other panels. DA will be fine for you and your customers.

I wonder which features you want on Plesk that dont have in DA? And how frequently do you use them?

I've been looking at direct admin and I was just about to decide on it but I noticed it does not support 64bit, does anyone know if this is something they will be supporting soon?

I just recently switched to Plesk and I couldn't be more than happy. It really puts me in control of my server and clients. I'm not a huge fan of cpanel but Directadmin is pretty good. I would have to rate from a personal experience plesk, directadmin, and then cpanel.

I've been looking at direct admin and I was just about to decide on it but I noticed it does not support 64bit, does anyone know if this is something they will be supporting soon?

As far as I know, DirectAdmin supports 64 bit just fine. CentOS 4.x x64 is listed as one of their options when purchasing a new license.

I've been looking at direct admin and I was just about to decide on it but I noticed it does not support 64bit, does anyone know if this is something they will be supporting soon?

Am I imagining it or is my 64-bit FC6 running DirectAdmin perfectly fine?

Am I imagining it or is my 64-bit FC6 running DirectAdmin perfectly fine?

Mine is....

I like DA, although when selling webspace I always choose the latest cPanel, simply because it's a great selling point for clients. One day though we might choose to offer DA too because it's so nice.

I like DA, although when selling webspace I always choose the latest cPanel, simply because it's a great selling point for clients. One day though we might choose to offer DA too because it's so nice.

With Installtron you aren't missing any real features that cPanel has. You are only missing the bugs I mean "features" it has and always will have.

DirectAdmin is a secure point to start. The only regret is that you have to put a lot of mods to reach a list of features that you will find in cPanel or Plesk. That said, all mods are really easy to install (skins, awstats, installatron, pear, hotlink, tomcat, postgresql,etc,etc), and a lot of those are free or really cheaper.

With a good skin and some of those plugins, your users will not recognize the difference, and you, like an admin, will be save hours and hours in administration your servers, with nearly 0 importants bugs in the last years.

DirectAdmin is a secure point to start. The only regret is that you have to put a lot of mods to reach a list of features that you will find in cPanel or Plesk. That said, all mods are really easy to install (skins, awstats, installatron, pear, hotlink, tomcat, postgresql,etc,etc), and a lot of those are free or really cheaper.

With a good skin and some of those plugins, your users will not recognize the difference, and you, like an admin, will be save hours and hours in administration your servers, with nearly 0 importants bugs in the last years.

On the contrary, I simply don't care about the extra mods.

And it has worked out. The only mod I use ATM is the SMTP Limiter.

DA is very affordable, light-weight and their staff is very helpful if you run into any trouble. I used Cpanel a lot but always had issues - didn't use Plesk tho. I'm all for DA as it has proven to be the best solution if peace in mind is important to you.

We used all three plus HSphere. We like DA because it's not a resource hog, it's flexible, good FTP & SFTP setup. Like has been said before, it doesn't install with lots of stuff. You add what you need. You can switch versions of the DB or Apache without carnage. The newsgroup is helpful. It's easy to skin. 64 bit only in Linux. It doesn't support 64 bit FreeBSD, which is why we may leave it. It doesn't come with any coherent off-site backup capabilities. You need to add them. The same goes for AV, Anti-Spam, and AWStats. It doesn't install secure, you need to add your own cert and adjust the login script, but the instructions are all there and it has the most helpful user community by far compared to the other two. Past the install, it never gives any trouble, and I mean never.

The current reason that has us looking at Hsphere is those silly guys aren't supporting FreeBSD 64 bit, only 32 bit. If you are into Linux though. you're golden. They do RHES/Centos 64.

We have had one HSphere server for about a year. We have automotive suppliers and design houses and these are the only two control panels that handle their FTP requirements in an efficient manner. Of the two, DA works better.

All around, HSphere is less flexible, but installs with more. HSphere is a cluster system, lots to learn, has billing automation built in, and support is more expensive. HSphere also does Windows in the same cluster as NIX. The management interface is the same. You can have Exchange Mail, MSSQL, MySQL, and Load Balancing, all managed from the control panel. The downside is it uses the Plesk type e-mail. It has AWStats. Plesk has no AWStats on the NIX side. The 3rd party plugin on the NIX side doesn't work with FreeBSD, and is a challenge for Linux while it is the default for Windows. Unlike DirectAdmin, cPanel, Plesk, and HSphere break if you get too creative. So if you need to experiment and tweak, then DA is the only choice you have. As far as the UI is concerned, DA will generate the fewest support calls from customers, hands down. The most confusing is cPanel with the others in between. cPanel will give you the most trouble, will hit your system the hardest, and installs secure with everything you will likely ever need right from the start. You don't have to custom install anything. They have scripts to install about anything. Finding help is easy and inexpensive.

There's the facts. Pick your poison.

Plesk has no AWStats on the NIX side.

That's not true anymore. Plesk has supported AWStats since version 8.

That's not true anymore. Plesk has supported AWStats since version 8.

WOW! After years, and years, and years of begging. That is GOOD news.

Thanks Dave!

From v1.32.2 DirectAdmin has AWstats too: http://www.directadmin.com/features.php?id=894

>From v1.32.2 DirectAdmin has AWstats too<

Yes, I see that. I'm currently using one of the plug-ins because it wasn't available when I needed it. I like the idea of it being part of the control panel install and someone else maintain it. We create 50 meg log files every day and have tested and found AWStats load to be a non-issue. The main work happens at night when server loads are low. For people that really get into stats, it won't be AWStats, but then there won't be two alike either, so AWStats is the best you can do from a hosting perspective.

We ended up on DirectAdmin because the other two couldn't do what we needed to do for the automotive suppliers that we have a customers as well as allowing us to go to whatever version of Apache, MySQL, and PHP we wanted to at will. We have one server that dishes 10,000 of dynamic content pages in between a minute and a minute and 6 seconds. Approximately 30% of that is inbound gathering information for requests. Having a control panel that tells you what software you are going to run is like the tail wagging the dog. Unlike every other one we've used, there has been no trouble, and it is by far the fastest and least resource intensive. I do like all the features in cPanel and Plesk. cPanel especially gave the domain user tremendous flexibility. However, this came with a performance, maintenance, administrative cost. We are probably more the niche, and DirectAdmin was the only fit for us and our customers.

Admin takes none of our time. When someone deletes a user or domain, there is no clean-up work that needs to be done nor any special procedures that need to be followed. It also integrates with any of the billing solutions out there and hosting and domain selling software.

DirectAdmin was also the simplest by far for customers. They were used to one they used before, but when they saw this one, there really haven't been any questions. We skinned one of the themes that already looks VERY nice. (They have some ugly ducklings in there too.) The people see it, they just say "WOW! This is so easy and intuitive. It always works like you would expect and I don't need to call anybody." And NOBODY does call with questions. The file manager is also good capable, fast, and webmasters love it.

I will be acquiring a new server to replace our AMD 246. When we bought it, Intel was in the antique business. This time around, it's looking more like it will be Intel.

It will be FreeBSD again. We learned a horribly painful lesson after many tries from many high-end Linux providers that there are times when FreeBSD is the only answer that works. The problem of course is the is less attention given to it than Linux and Windows. We're running 7 now, and it is astounding. We are seriously evaluating 64 bit to get out of the 4 gig constraint. According to recent benchmarks, FreeBSD 7 is significantly faster with 64 bit than 32.(Unlike previous releases)

DirectAdmin does not have a 64 bit version for FreeBSD. cPanel does, and their offering might make sense for a lot of people, especially since they now follow Ports. Plesk has historically been very tepid about FreeBSD. It's too soon to tell if that is changing. I learned all may not be lost with DirectAdmin. Rumor has it that DirectAdmin simply will use the 32 compatability libraries. I have not confirmed that it works, let alone reliable. I would think think it would be a lot easier to support FreeBSD than 54 versions of Linux.

We have used CPanel before and seriously, some customers complained that there is too much buttons for them to press till they got confused on what is what, they suggested me to get a new control panel or remove some icons from the cpanel. I changed to Direct Admin and since, users have loved the panel. Personally, although I am quite advanced compared to the customers, I would use cpanel for the Fantastico feature while on the Direct Admin I would use the installatron feature, I believe everything has it's strength and weaknesses I would say D.A is a good panel and I really support it and it's development. Bad thing is that, not much programmers are willing to invest in 3rd party add-ons on the panel, there are a few, but still not enough..

I agree with you on all points.

I had servers with Plesk and cPanel. I wasn't real excited about people telling me the control panel doesn't come out of the box with everything anybody could possibly think of because I didn't see myself doing it myself. However, I really didn't have a choice. Where I was going, the other two proved completely impossible. What was very evident, is DA has by far the most skilled on-line community. You can go there for help, and learn from many people with the skills to write plug-ins or put together anything you need at a low price. I think DA is being just plain silly not to leverage them. Then there wouldn't be the price thing you mentioned. While Plesk was in the same boat, you can bet DA also lost a lot of sales to cPanel because they didn't have AWStats. Yet DA had two plug-ins for years from developers on the forum that worked great.

How would you rate Direct Admin compared to CPanel, Plesk, and Webmin?
if i want rate directadmin from these 3 control panel i give 6 from 10 and give webmin 8 from 10 and give cpanel/whm 9 from 10 ...