Hey everyone,

I'm trying to figure out which standard hosting control panel would be best for me. Here's what I'm after:


For the type of stuff I do, only I need access to this panel. I host about 20 sites (a few personal and a couple for friends included) but clients usually email me when they want something added. Hosting is not the primary aspect of my business and it's far easier for them and for me if they just shoot me an email when something needs to be changed.
For the people that do control their own sites, all they need is FTP access. Nothing more - SFTP (or similar) would be cool but not really necessary.
I want something that can allow me to manage all domains and FTP accounts from one control panel account. I've used DA most of my years hosting but I'm familiar with the shell and how to manage from there as well (having a panel is just easier I think, load/space on sever isn't an issue).
I recently ordered a nice new VPS and decided to give cPanel a shot, but it's really, really not doing what I want it to do. It's very powerful and WHM/cPanel can do just about anything, but I don't like the way it handles domains - just not what I want. Seems way overcomplicated and overdone - if that makes sense. :stickout:

So, where to? DA was workable for how I do things, but certainly not ideal (I was still switching around accounts and I found the "Adminsitrator, Reseller, User" structure to be a little strange since Admins couldn't do simple User functions without clicking around to different "User" menus). Again,

Plesk is the only panel I have not tried - does anyone think it has a shot for the way I do thinks (which I realize probably isn't normal)?


Thanks - looking forward to some insight! :)

Google Webmin

Thanks for your reply. :)

Unfortunately my host (ServInt) does not offer or support Webmin and I'm not sure if it's something I can install and configure properly myself. I also don't know how ServInt would feel if I removed cPanel on there and replaced it with Webmin - not to mention the fact that cPanel has just got to be a pain to remove with all the stuff it controls. At this point, a reimage would be fine though (as the server is doing nothing for me). Since Webmin's demo has been down for 24 hours now, I think I'll give it a shot on a local machine here and see what I can do with it (and if I can manage installing it).

I was taking a more detailed look around Plesk's demo and it actually seems to do the job better than cPanel (for me). Seems like, from the admin login, you can see and control everything (including multiple domains for multiple accounts) all without logging in and out for every domain.

However, from the "admin" account's perspective, it looks like it still wants to assign 1 FTP account to 1 domain. Is there a way I can manage multiple domains via FTP with just 1 login? Ideally, each "client" should have 1 FTP login and all domains should have their own 'domain.com' folder (and that should be the top most level of the FTP account).

:)

but I don't like the way it handles domains - just not what I want
how? is it different to other panels? the same way named/DNS service, nothing is different