Ok, here's a question for everyone...

Most people here love CPanel, it seems quite easy to use which is probably why. HSphere has lots of features but doesn't look as good, I guess people who prefer functionality go for that. Plesk... well I guess its for people who prefer a simple design.

The question is, what features would it take for you to switch to a different control panel?

I've made a basic list of features which I think may be enough to get hosts to switch, please add any you guys have:

- Good interface (Easy to use, nice to look at)
- Stability (ok, that's a given)
- Built-in billing and invoicing.
- Built-in helpdesk.
- Built-in live chat
- Fail over (have a second server take over the first if the first fails).
- Clustering (management of multiple servers).
- Scripts to help migration from an existing panel.
- Built-in domain management.
- Ability to select what daemons/services you wish to run (for example, qmail instead of postfix).
- Support for management from your PDA.

After you've thought about those, my next question would be, in terms of pricing models - do people prefer a monthly fee? or a one off fee + yearly support fees? In light of that long list of features, would a 'Lite' or cut down version be appropriate?

Also, if the CP were to only initially run on FreeBSD would that deter people?

Please add more ideas on what features are important and comments about pricing.

Basically.. we have a CP and we just want some information from existing hosts about how they feel about their software. If the conditions are right we may well make it open source.

Note: this is not an invite for beta testers or for sales, please make no requests of this nature.

The criteria for switching to an open source CP rather than a paid for CP for me are somewhat different.

For an open source CP it'd just need to be relatively easy to install (AKA some instructions someone from earth has a chance to understand) and it just needs to work "relatively well". Being open source if the basic system is easy to get working we can mod the rest and probably get happy. I guess what I mean is an OSS cp wouldn't need NEAR as much whiz-bang as a paid for CP would to get me to use it.

Here's some things I'd like to see:

Centralized control, a master server and slave servers so you only need to log into one cp to manage them all.

Tiered access - admin - reseller - domain - user at a minimum.

Good SSL integration, easy CSR creation, etc because I hate doing it from the command line.

Other than that I just want it to "work" and be easy for my customer to use.

I'd like the control panel to take advantage of chroot by putting each user in it for added security and yes I realize that it is relatively easy to break out of one but there are fixes for this.

I'd like the control panel to be well organized because personally I think WHM is one of the most cluttered control panels despite the huge amount of options.

FreeBSD would be an awesome platform to release it on but for your sake I think you might want to port it to Linux as well as there is a large Linux web hosting market.

Pricing on a lease to own basis would be nice but having the option of flat out buying it would be another good option.

Dixiesys:
I understand what you're saying about the difference in requirements between an open souce project and a commercial product. Clearly I will have to think more seriously about where I should take this. From what you've said I'd say my panel is too good to be an open source product, I really do think it could kick CPanel out of the popularity table :D I've long since been a fan of open source software so perhaps a partial-source license or something?
We've already got a centralised control system with the ability to setup a backup server should the master fail.
About good SSL support, what is wrong with the CSR generation provided by existing panels such as Plesk or CPanel?

JonL:
chrooting each user isn't an easy thing to manage, I was looking at perhaps trying to make some sort of Virtual Server creation system and after looking at jail I thought it would be a perfect solution. A jail may be easy to break out of but to web hosts that may not be as important as being able to keep users and their files seperate (especially if they're not going to use suExec). There's also a patch for the FreeBSD jail that allows it to support _multiple IPs_
:)
Porting the core system to Linux would be easy, its highly modular (in theory it could even be run under Windows) but there are non-core parts which would take significantly more effort and time to port such as cluster support, virtual server support and failover support.

Greetings:

"The question is, what features would it take for you to switch to a different control panel?"

The biggest feature would be the ability to easily, quickly, and accurately migrate from the previous control panel to the new one.

Thank you.

dynamicnet: Yes I did think that is the case, unfortunately I don't have access to a CPanel or Plesk server so I can't find out how and where it stores things.

I've made a new thread with some screen shots asking for feedback (I was going to post it in this thread but its a slightly different topic :/)

Originally posted by ice53ltd
dynamicnet: Yes I did think that is the case, unfortunately I don't have access to a CPanel or Plesk server so I can't find out how and where it stores things.

I've made a new thread with some screen shots asking for feedback (I was going to post it in this thread but its a slightly different topic :/)

Need help on this part buddy?

We have used about every control panel out there :)

We have the following servers we can give you access to if you wish to make such scripts:

1) Ensim - I will kiss your personally on this one :), if you can move us from Ensim to any control panel, will do.
2) Plesk
3) WHM/CPanel
4) Virtuozzo - Lets not touch this one :)

Let me know :) or you can talk to my friend Shiekron at his AIM: Shiekron

We know PHP/ASM/C++/Perl if you need any assistance, our programming crew works with Virtulization, we might be willing to help you push this product.

Please contact us.

Thanks!

Brandon
Eryxma Networks Support

Import data from every sort of management software form perldesk, to modernbill, to ensim, to pleask, to cpanel, etc etc. All of them.

It would also not bind me to vendor specific precompiled versions of apache and sendmail (Ensim pissed me off with this one). It would automate billing account management, help desk, server automation, support clustering, work on pretty much every unix I can find, and also have an open source interface to write my own API if I so choose.

And it must be xHTML strit compliant and use CSS so i can change layouts and interface with a simple CSS switch.

And it must be able to reverse engineer on its own, pretty much any web API, including enow, auth.net, etc.

I don't think importing from PerlDesk would be very much necessary.

Modernbill.. of coarse :)

Brandon
Eryxma Networks Support

It'd be nice to be able to modify the source...

I like to make custom vhost entries into Apache or custom bind domain records.. But with cpanel thats all pretty much hard coded..

I'd like so I could just either add to the default vhost/record thats added or modify the source...

I know.. Strange request but makes life a bit easier...

Since he has a SOAP interface, a simple piece to extract data from existing billers (PerlBill, etc) and then post to the SOAP server would be all that is needed.

Make it targeted towards hosting companies. Everyone here is basically giving comments to that effect, but just keep that in mind. What is essential for people like me just starting out?

*Control of customers accounts and reseller option (I use ensim)
*Billing Software that does reoccuring information and auto invoices.
*Trouble Ticket support system (Live Chat as an option or plugin) I personally dont want Live Chat because I wont be avalible all the time, and I think its tacky when someone has live chat but is never there.
*Auto-creation (templates) for domain registration and hosting packages with option of auto-setup.
*Intergration of that software that auto-installs programs (phpBB, invisionboard, ect...)

I know most people said the same thing, but its always nice to hear from multiple people.

In the touble ticket system, I don't think that is needed in a "control panel" I rather keep that seperate, away from the control panel, so as live chat.

If you wish we can work on intergating it with our other software Cyracle.com and offer it here with this control panel. Live chat, ticket system, knowledgebase, all in one.

Brandon
Eryxma Networks Support

HostInspect: Thanks for the generous offer, access to existing servers will be great. We already have a command line interface for creating accounts, adding mail boxes, databases, forwards and anything else you'd need. I hope these can be used to help migrate away from other users.

Acronym BOY: We also felt somewhat restricted, our current plan for offering installs was to offer both binary and source versions. A lot of web hosts aren't comfortable compiling source code, but for those that are we have a list of required options for various software and you can do the install yourself. :)

OK.. I've taken all of your points on board and am gonna continue with what you guys have said in mind.

Since we're new web hosts ourselves and have about 40 customers under our responsibility we're moving extremely fast to get a CP they can use. I hope to have something available really soon :)

With regards to billing, we will definitely be supporting auto-invoicing and recurring (or recurring with customer authorisation. I spoke to our acquiring bank about this and they preferred we do that for our customers) billing however it will be up to the underlying payment module if this feature works with a particular payment system (some 3rd party processors don't allow recurring transactions).


Please note: I'd rather not be PM'd about this, I would rather everything was said in public. Thanks :)


PS: In case you haven't seen it yet, screenies are available at http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?threadid=97324&goto=newpost

Not only should it be a pretty panel as standard, it should be easily skinned!

Matt, it is easily themed and completely skinnable thanks to the SOAP layer which means you can write entirely new interfaces which resemble nothing like the one we've made, if one so wished :)

I see you mention you support the basics (i.e. perl/php/mysql etc.) but I dont see any mention of support for Frontpage?

As much as I hate having to provide this, we have hundreds of customers who prefer this, and I would suggest that most hosts (using one of the current mature CP's) have a decent userbase of Frontpage users they wouldnt want to give up, just to switch to a nicer panel...

Unfortunately FrontPage support is not something we've given much thought to supporting.

I agree that there is demand for FP extensions but I take that view that things such as FrontPage extensions and MS ASP technology should really be used on Windows servers.

Of course, views can change depending on demand but FrontPage extensions do open up potential holes :/

I do agree with you, but there would be an issue of converting current users of cpanel/plesk/ensim et al.

Because these panels offer frontpage, its pretty common for the host to say - "what the hell, I can offer Frontpage, why not, I can target even more customers".

If by switching to your panel, they would lose the Frontpage support and as a result customers.

In our case alone where we are looking to move control panels, thats a few hundred domains at the very least - and straight away a no go.

You may want to attract new hosts only, and I guess if you do open source this, hosts could add their own FP support, but in conversion terms, FP support is pretty critical I think.

Originally posted by ice53ltd
Unfortunately FrontPage support is not something we've given much thought to supporting.

I agree that there is demand for FP extensions but I take that view that things such as FrontPage extensions and MS ASP technology should really be used on Windows servers.

Of course, views can change depending on demand but FrontPage extensions do open up potential holes :/

You should re-consider...We have hundreads of FP users on FREEBSD and they can install or remove the extentions from within there user CP.

You will need this feature sooner or later.

Well I've spent the day looking around and I've found Improved mod_frontpage at http://home.edo.uni-dortmund.de/~chripo/ ... by the looks of it we could fairly easily support this, anyone else use this? any opinions? TBH, we've never used FrontPage or FrontPage extensions so we're having to look around for the best way to support it.