hello, i'm the founder of www.cyna-hosting.be and my questions is which is the best control panel to control the webspaces of my clients? Example directadmin, ... are there better control panels than this?? Thanks for help

Blinc

Blinc, why don't you visit webhostingtalk .nl?

Mostly used Control Panels for webhosting businesses in The Netherlands are cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin. Certainly budget webhosters tend to stick with DirectAdmin.

webhostingtalk .nl/cpanel/98476-waarom-geen-cpanel.html
webhostingtalk .nl/billing-administratie-en-monitoring-systemen/105549-welk-controlpanel-gebruik-je.html
webhostingtalk .nl/dedicated-en-vps-unmanaged-hosting/76388-controle-panel.html

In case you have any other questions, feel free to send me a personal message any time.

I've used both DirectAdmin and cPanel and I like both, but my noob customers tend to prefer DirectAdmin for the clean interface.

I've used both DirectAdmin and cPanel and I like both, but my noob customers tend to prefer DirectAdmin for the clean interface.

ok thx :) i thought that also

I've used both DirectAdmin and cPanel and I like both, but my noob customers tend to prefer DirectAdmin for the clean interface.

Good point. I have found that cPanel has a more "familiar" interface to many clients, but I suppose that the DirectAdmin interface could be "cleaner" (and easier?) for new clients without prior web hosting experience. Nice post.

Is there any preference among your long-term clients?

-mike

I get less questions about directadmin than I do about cpanel. cpanel has video tutorials, but some of my clients just want the answer. directadmin has that very detailed help site that people can go to and read just what they need without having to watch the whole video to get what they need in the last 30 seconds or so. LOL.

Even my people who asked for cpanel, once I show them directadmin, they end up liking it better and although I haven't done it (want to but looks complicated) you can skin the directadmin interface to look entirely different. I know you can do this with cpanel, but I don't think to the same extent. PrecisionEffect uses directadmin and they have a completely customized skin on theirs and tote the panel as their own. YOu can check out a demo on their site.

I sometimes wonder if people stick with cPanel just because it's widely used and easy to move clients between servers easily.
I'm sure once a client is on, or moved to directadmin they would stay there.

I haven't had any issues with moving someone from cpanel to directadmin. there is a script that will convert cpanel backups to directadmin. So so far, I've been lucky.

One thing I really like about directadmin other than their price, is that they use so little resources as compared to cpanel and installatron is great. It takes a few more clicks to get there, but in the end it's more versatile. You can downgrade within the interface which fantastico can't do.

I personally like vhcs2 but cpanel/plesk have so much market saturation they are almost the standard and many clients actually look for one or the other. So its probably best to pick one of these, but you could in theory offer multiple to obtain a larger client base.

I'm not sure about plesk, but the reason clients look for cpanel is because they've never heard of anything else. If they were given the option to try both (as they do with us) many of them choose directadmin even if they were originally looking for cpanel.

I'm not sure about plesk, but the reason clients look for cpanel is because they've never heard of anything else. If they were given the option to try both (as they do with us) many of them choose directadmin even if they were originally looking for cpanel.I agree, and thanks for the shout. ;)

We used Plesk prior to switching to a DirectAdmin base, and I can honestly say it's one of the best decisions we've made.

You're welcome and I'd love to know how you made that skin. I look at the information on DA's website and it's daunting. I can do php and css and xhtml, but that stuff is awful for an untrained eye like mine. Why can't they make it so you have a default skin and then can manipulate the look of it with css like many skinable apps do?

interworx is the best control panel.

interworx is the best control panel.

How is it better compare to cpanel?

I do agree directadmin is quite good. It is simple & light. Much easier to use for beginner.

...

Even my people who asked for cpanel, once I show them directadmin, they end up liking it better and although I haven't done it (want to but looks complicated) you can skin the directadmin interface to look entirely different. I know you can do this with cpanel, but I don't think to the same extent...

Actually, you have full control over the appearance of cPanel. Granted, we prefer people stick with skins as not to cause issues by using different underlying code (called themes). However, several hosting providers do use substantially customized versions of cPanel that most wouldn't readily recognize as being cPanel/WHM.

Here's a sample a friend of mine threw together in a few hours to demonstrate the branding capabilities of cPanel: MyBrandedHost.com - Of course, assembling the accompanying documentation took a little longer than that.

We'd love to see more people brand cPanel since many people call us up thinking cPanel itself is their hosting company :).

We'd love to see more people brand cPanel since many people call us up thinking cPanel itself is their hosting company :).

This is completely off topic but the fact that so many web hosts do not value their brand enough to do something as simple as just replace a logo for their control panels! Even just a branded logo would go a huge distance to reminding the customer where they are and exactly who they are working with.

I have to say the PrecisionEffect DA skin looks amazing! You guys did an amazing job with it!

But when I look at that, it still looks like cpanel to me. Yes they branded the header and widened the the main area and put the status info on top, but it still looks characteristically like cpanel. I would have no trouble in picking it out.

With Directadmin, who doesn't use a lot of icons for it's default enhanced interface, a company can really make it all their own with icons and such, like precisioneffect did.

We have used DirectAdmin and Cpanel both and I and my clients always prefer cPanel.

I have to say the PrecisionEffect DA skin looks amazing! You guys did an amazing job with it!With Directadmin, who doesn't use a lot of icons for it's default enhanced interface, a company can really make it all their own with icons and such, like precisioneffect did.Thanks again to you both for the positive feedback! It's very nice to hear!

But when I look at that, it still looks like cpanel to me. Yes they branded the header and widened the the main area and put the status info on top, but it still looks characteristically like cpanel. I would have no trouble in picking it out.


Keep in mind, this was just thrown together in a matter of hours by someone who is not a professional designer.


With Directadmin, who doesn't use a lot of icons for it's default enhanced interface, a company can really make it all their own with icons and such, like precisioneffect did.

You can customize every icon in the cPanel interface quite easily using the branding editor. You can also customize the AJAX, images and CSS using the branding editor as well.

If you want to get rid of that "characteristically cPanel" feel and this just isn't doing the job for you, just make a custom theme. A cPanel theme just a series of HTML pages with some API code thrown in. Just copy a theme like X3 (located in /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x3) and modify - but don't modify X3 itself as those modifications will be lost during cPanel updates.

Thanks for the info!

How is interworx better compare to cpanel?

Better components. The thing uses djbdns for dns, and qmail for mail. Normally, I would prefer postfix over qmail, but both are still better than exim, what cpanel uses.

Other than that, the interface is cooler, it has more useful features, such as cpu/memory/bandwidth graphs that are automatically setup with the base cp installation. Also, there's no need to worry about operating system level components interferring with control panel level components, since the control panel uses the same ones.

I do agree directadmin is quite good. It is simple & light. Much easier to use for beginner.
i agree with you but i think directadmin is for who person know some about linux and server but i think that person famous with server maybe use cpanel...
bcause with directadmin administrator should be upgrade mysql phpmyadmin and etc from ssh and install software from ssh but in cpanel you can use easyapache...