Web Hosting Control Panel
Web hosting control panel selection is one of the most important
decisions you have to make when selecting your web host. With a
good control panel, you are saved of remembering the many technical
details involved in hosting your web site, and have some more spare
time for developing your unique website.
Which CP is the best for your business? The choices become wider
each day. So many choices, you may almost feel lost. cPanel and
Plesk, Helm, Ensim and DirectAdmin are only some of the names you
would see. Last month, I've moved to a new host. Before moving,
I've invested alot of time checking the options. the control panel
selection became a critical issue, since it is usually bundled with
the deal.
During my process of control panel selection, two candidates remained:
- cPanel was the
original control panel. It is alot more mature and proven
in the field, and hence has a larger amount of applications. For
example: an integrated backup solution. Automated application
deployment with Fantastico, brandable (multilingual) skins (rvskin),
and a built-in backup solution which allows me to easily move
my files to another cPanel-based web host when needed.
- Plesk 7.5 Reloaded
is a newer web hosting control panel. It has it's an all-new
GUI, designed by great usability experts, and is sure to catch
some market share. But it still young and not all features are
ready.
Recommended reading: The
following thread summarizes the most important points. Especially,
read madsere's response:
Which CP you would choose I
think depend on you and what you want to do with it.
If you are running your own sites only, or only expect to give
users FTP access Plesk
looks nice. It has a somewhat easier learning curve for administrators
and users alike. This is also the solution that will give you
best performance = most sites on a server for any given server
load.
If you expect to give your
users shell access there are no alternative to Ensim,
using High Security mode for sites. It is not without a cost though
and you should not expect to be able to host anywhere near the
same number of sites in this environment as in Plesk (or Ensim
Low Security).
Cpanel
- has a large following mainly for historic reasons - they were
among the first around and way older than Plesk or Ensim. It always
reminds me of a big house that started out as a small house and
had a large number of annexes bolted onto it.
Helm
thankfully doesn't exist for Linux but I find it quite similar
to Plesk in many ways.
Finally, I've selected cPanel, because of it's better backup solution,
and because it was the only solution available for my selected host
(site5).
My suggestion:
- When looking for a control panel, look at who uses it, and for
what.
- Carefully define your requirements, and ask questions in forums,
if you are not sure.
Happy Selection,
Amnon
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