How to Choose the Right Control Panel for Your Server

Control panels generally should not be installed on existing servers with software and services already installed. Instead, we highly recommend you install control panels on new deployments. Control panels are generally simple to use, but they can also have their own amount of complexity that needs to be accounted for.

What Does a Control Panel Do?

A control panel provides a simple, browser-based point and click interface for creating and maintaining your Web site and associated applications. This includes your email and database servers, directories and FTP accounts. Also it is a central place for the installation of any customized software needed for your site and set up individual accounts for staff.

With control panel software, you do not need to know computer programming to effectively manage your Web site.

cPanel

Of course, this is the most popular and defacto number one control panel in the hosted services market. You may already be familiar with cPanel, as it is the most common control panel used by hosting companies. It is also the industry standard control panel, offering:

• The most features and options, as well as the most power and flexibility of all control panels on the market
• Installation and flexible license options starting from a single domain license all the way up to unlimited — which a valuable feature if you intend to resell Web hosting

More of cPanel’s exhaustive feature list can be found here

Plesk

Plesk is available for both Windows and Linux so make sure you get the appropriate version for your server.

Plesk offers:

• Fewer features than cPanel in the basic program, but a large library of plug-ins for adding features
• A more streamlined interface than cPanel, although some users do find it more difficult to use and customize
• Multiple licensing options from 30 domains up to unlimited at time of writing.

Plesk is generally a good choice for small businesses that don’t need quite as much power as cPanel offers.

Information about Plesk for Infrastructure providers can be found here

Direct Admin

Direct Admin is available for Linux and BSD systems. It is one of the easiest, fastest and most stable panels. Its interface is very user-friendly. Plus, it’s one of the cheapest as well.

All of the options are categorized and located on the top. This control panel also supports multiple access levels: Administrator, User, and Reseller. In addition, it has built-in anti-spam tools. Moreover, it is possible to view the complete usage statistics of each resource. Basically, it has a lot of options and features, such as DNS management, database creation, and management, reseller account creation and management, backup creation, file management etc. But the main peculiarity of this panel is its simplicity. You don’t have to be tech-savvy at all to understand and use it.

ISP Manager

It is a Linux-based control panel widely used among Eastern European hosting companies. Has a very simple and basic design but that does not make it less comfortable.

There are two versions of this web panel: Lite and Business. The first one, Lite, apart from other features that are more or less common for each panel, can be used for web-server management, creating users with different access levels, importing data from remote servers etc. Due to this, the Lite panel is mostly used for Dedicated and VPS servers. As for Business ISPmanager version, it’s better for shared or reseller hosting as it allows to manage multiple servers (clusters) and easily create and manage user accounts.

In Conclusion

All of the above-mentioned panels have their own peculiarities, pros, and cons and cost differences . It is quite hard to determine which one is the best. This is a matter of choice. However, these web panels have one common feature: they make managing servers and hosting easier and quicker. Whichever path you choose, it will definitely simplify your experience of managing your ServerHub Infrastructure.