Best Control Panel

[Dave]

What do you guys think is the best control panel. Please vote, then post your opinion as to why you voted for the respective control panel.

[Dave]

I personally like PLESK 5, for its reliability and stability.

[SWR]

We have Plesk. And we have Cpanel.

I voted Cpanel. Customers seem to prefer it. And, since it's customers we're after; Cpanel is the Best Control Panel.

[Wire]

CPanel is really great user friendliness and most recognizable. I vote for cpanel.

[Chicken]

While I like Plesk, I still feel it is unnecessarily un-userfriendly to do some things (for the end user as well as for the admin). The cobalt one (when I used it RaQ3/4) didn't have the bells and whistles of other cp's but it made sense and was easy to use for both the admin and the end user. Currently I'm using Cpanel and just getting used to it. More complex, but that's due to it being able to offer more.

My vote: Cpanel (so far).

The "best" for one, may not be the best for another however. In the end, what works for you and your customers is the best, and honestly for how much some clients use it, it is a wonder it is the big deal that it is sometimes.

[DizixCom]

I had to vote for HSPHERE. Of the lot it provides the most functionality, but with all the bugs they've had and their incredible lack of quality assurance I'm not 100% on these feelings any longer.

CPanel is starting to impress me more and more as a control panel because it's done in an obvious way which others (Plesk more than most) seem to disregard.

I enjoyed the Raq4 interface as well as Ensim as well in the past, but they seem to have lagged behind and I've not yet seen the new Raq's.

So, for a complete system: HSPHERE (control, billing, and ticket system all in one). For a better, more user friendly control panel: CPanel.

[inogenius]

Customers seem to prefer cPanel because of the looks of it and the ease of use. However I prefer Plesk, it's secure, and stable. Not to say that cPanel isn't, but I just think Plesk is more so.

[jolly]

Ensim is good but Cpanel is better give more freedom to the end user like installing scirpts by themselves.

:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:

[alchiba]

The techie side of me really likes Ensim. So for a while I offered it along with Cpanel but then noticed a steep increase in support requests from the Ensim population over the Cpanel group. So I decided to dump Ensim and move everyone to Cpanel boxes. The response was overwhelmingly favorable. Only a few were stalwart Ensim fans, so I had to help them find new homes.

Cpanel, warts and all notwithstanding, is a crowd pleaser and it does save time and money.

[Chicken]

And it seems Cpanel has made strides this past year. more updates, fewer problems, etc. I'm still getting used to WHM, but aside from that, I can see why people like it over some other ones.

As Dixicom said though, "So, for a complete system: HSPHERE (control, billing, and ticket system all in one)." and I admit that I do find it attractive to have everything you'd need all in one place, if it all works. There are some add-ons in which you can accomplish something similiar for both Plesk and Cpanel though I suppose.

[alchiba]

I do like what I hear about HSphere, but then again I shy away from the all-things-to-all-people software applications. I let Cpanel/WHM do the server stuff and QuickBooks do the billing stuff. I'm happy to be the glue between them. After all, I have to do something to justify my existence.

BTW, whatever happened to WHM's integrated billing thing? I haven't followed that very closely. Did it ever take off?

[DizixCom]

HSPHERE is decent, but imagine a billing system designed without any regard to general accounting practices and a ticket system designed without regard to the call center experience. It's all thrown together to provide functionality but it just isn't right.

[Rewdog]

As many times as I have seen this poll posted, I have always voted Plesk. Today that changes and I vote for cPanel. Plesk was the first widely used control panel I have used, and I felt it wasn't as ugly as everyone said. It got the job done, and kept it reliable. But when plesk breaks, it breaks bad. Upon doing a simple script run to upgrade to psa 5.0 from 2.5, it screwed up our entire database (PSA runs on PHP and Mysql) and when the database is screwed, nothing works. Support has great response time (Granted you get them during office hours) but you have to pay 50 dollars for them to suggest things for you to do and give you pointers and 150 an hour (Which we are ending up having to do) for them to log into the server and do the fix themselves.

Cpanel, though it may have a few more bugs than plesk (which are mainly in 3rd party scripts) more people are knowledgable about the control panel and readily available to support it, for less. Expense in the long run may be more, but it upgrades ITSELF most of the time (None of this running upgrade scripts which has more possibilities of errors and destruction) And, its eye candy. My mother comes and looks over my shoulder with Cpanel and say's its pretty. You don't have to go through 3 steps to find where to add a mail account. Its GUI, that's why windows does better with clients less knowledgable computer clients than linux. (Many budget clients are first time hostees).

Plesk has served us well for the majority of time, but for the increase of sales my next server will be cPanel.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by Rewdog
My mother comes and looks over my shoulder with Cpanel and say's its pretty.
That should be on the cpanel testimonial pages ;)

[Adam]

I voted for DarkORB's cPanel from Nick,

Few reasons:

*Customers prefer it.
*More functions/options/features
*Ease of use (for all user levels [end/reseller/root])


Only downside is the absolute suckiness of the documentation!

[Jan]

I am gradually getting to know all the wonderful perks of H-Sphere. Once you learn to navigate it, it is a great control panel :cool:

[Foxxie]

Hello everyone,
My vote goes out to *other* :D. I've found that people who know there way around, and such like to do things manually i.e. from shell/bash. Also to some of the people a control panel is a mere insult. So this is why I choose other.

[allan]

Originally posted by Foxxie
Hello everyone,
My vote goes out to *other* :D. I've found that people who know there way around, and such like to do things manually i.e. from shell/bash. Also to some of the people a control panel is a mere insult. So this is why I choose other.

Keep in mind that for most hosting companies the control panel is for their customers not for themselves. Most customers expect some sort of control panel with their site at this point, and a host that does not offer some sort of control panel will lose customers.

[Foxxie]

Originally posted by allan
Keep in mind that for most hosting companies the control panel is for their customers not for themselves. Most customers expect some sort of control panel with their site at this point, and a host that does not offer some sort of control panel will lose customers. Oh I've customers very much in mind :). It's just has been my experience that customers who know what they are doing are insulted by control panels, and prefer not to have one over the good ol'e bash/shell.

[FHDave]

Argh ... No ... not another poll of this :)
Without a proper normalization, the poll will be very misleading because there are way more CPanel users than HSphere, for example. And hence, there will be more votes for CPanel although that does not mean CPanel is the best Control Panel :)

Also, this poll can only be answered by those who have tried at least two control panels :)

Although we are CPanel Partner NOC, I voted for HSphere, btw :)

[Chicken]

Originally posted by FHDave
Also, this poll can only be answered by those who have tried at least two control panels :)
Correct, polls can be misleading. If you could poll people on which one they prefer in relation to which ones they've used, you would actually get a usable result.

[AceWeb]

cPanel, more options, easy to customeize, clients like it.

[PixelAxis]

My vote would go to CPanel.

Looking at it from a client's perspective, CPanel allows more features and is very easy to use. There are also better skins available so its easy to make CPanel look very attractive.

I've used Ensim and although it is more stable, it just doesn't have the ease of use and features CPanel has.

CPanel is easily worth the money :banana:

[VoxKeysGtr]

I've used Cpanel, Plesk and Ensim. I prefer Cpanel. It is easier forme to use. I am not a techie, so this control panel makes it easy for me to manage my web sites with the minimum of hassle.

[BarbaraC]

My fav is Plesk from an admin standpoint. Although I'm not new to the hosting industry, I am new at sys admin. I use Plesk for web dev clients for whom I maintain sites for.

I like cPanel for clients who maintain their own sites.

I had tried ensim and didn't care for it much.

I haven't tried Hsphere yet, but I've been hearing a lot of good things about it.

[jbiz718]

I like hsp complete

[stephen]

cpanel - easy to use and does the job easily enough without much hastle. :)

[KIAHost]

I voted for Ensim. I have an extensive background with both cPanel and Ensim, and Ensim just seems alot more stable. It might not be as attractive and have as many features but what it does do, it does very well and without many complications.

When you try to throw too many features into 1 product things get missed and quality starts to deminish.

[Haddy]

CPanel for sure...Like said before its a crowd pleaser...Isnt that what we all wanna do :D

[allan]

Originally posted by Haddy
CPanel for sure...Like said before its a crowd pleaser...Isnt that what we all wanna do :D

Only the hosting companies who want to stay in business :D.

[Haddy]

Originally posted by allan
Only the hosting companies who want to stay in business :D. Who wants to go and do a crazy thing like htat?! :csmoking:

[OPPressed]

you prefer ease of use and features over stability??

[CompCity]

Originally posted by OPPressed
you prefer ease of use and features over stability??

No but customers do. I do have a few beefs with CPanel, although they have been much better about updates there are still some bugs that have been around for a year and are still there.

All in all: it's the most prefered amongst clients, and has many available features.

[Alex[nl]]

From the client's point of view I'd say HSpehre for sure, since it allows a lot more configurating and gives more freedom.. CPanel on the other hand is easier for people who do not want to setup everything themselves (since it's more limited).

I have no idea how the HSphere Reseller interface looks but I must say the CPanel reseller is a bit too limited for me (up/downgrading clients f.e. could be more extended imho)..

Just my 0.02 ;)

[timb]

Hi, New member here.
Honestly, I like HSphere, they have top notch customer support, it seems to be really stable, and my customer seem to like it ok. The one thing that bugs me is that I feel it is a tad over complicated, and there are english problems a few places , but other than that, the built in domain registration and billing far outweighs that. Just my $0.02 though. :-)
-Tim

[suppleSupport]

Hrmmm...

Plesk is slow, bland, featureless.
Ensim is hard-to-use and ugly.
Never used H-Sphere, but it's much more expensive.

I voted for Cpanel. Best end-user interface, although buggy.

[stephen]

Cpanel, for reasons stated above, though Ensim is ok, just that you gotta be careful on what to install or it'll screw something up. :)

[Operator]

cPanel:

The good:
*Customers prefer it
*Customer friendly
*Most function ever
*Wide source of downloadable skins

The bad:
*Updates and upgrades are made almost daily
*Bad documentation
*cPanel.net could use a site redesign :)

[net-trend]

Originally posted by elevation:
Plesk is slow, bland, featureless.
Ensim is hard-to-use and ugly.
Never used H-Sphere, but it's much more expensive.
I voted for Cpanel. Best end-user interface, although buggy.

OMG! that's exactly how i feel!!! :clap:

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

It must be noted H-Sphere includes a control panel, but is complete shared hosting automation.

The others listed are "just" control panels. H-Sphere is complete automation.

Thank you.

[allan]

Originally posted by dynamicnet:
It must be noted H-Sphere includes a control panel, but is complete shared hosting automation.

The others listed are "just" control panels. H-Sphere is complete automation.


Actually, Ensim offers the same thing.I am pretty sure that most people use just the Webppliance product, but they actually offer a solution very similar to H-Sphere.

[interactive]

I think 99% of Ensim users run Webppliance. I don't think Ensim is that bad for the money. Plesk isn't really all that bland, it's real easy to customize the layout. And version 5 kicks butt! Matt from UnitedHosting (good guy btw) did a great job on his layout for Ensim. If you want I can pull up the link from that *other* forum.

[RH4U]

My vote goes it WHM/Cpanel only because of its popularity, but i give H-sphere a strong and climbing second..

[Robert]

Webmin is the best!

Well Cpanel6 is the best for newbies. And it's loaded with great features and easy to use. But webmin is much better for advance users. here here!

[Locke]

I can't vote for one, since I use most Plesk Master, CPanel, and Ensim.

People have preference, and they all have their place. Ensim can do what CPanel does in terms of ease of installing scripts, just requires a little modding, but CPanel does it automatically(+ there). Plesk is great, CPanel is great, and Ensim is great. It just really depends. Ensim 3.5 is an improved default interface, but we can get skins, or hire a designer to make a template. I think they all have their place in the market, and some people like one or the other, just depends I guess.

[101sales]

Gotta be Plesk.

It is the most stable control panel i've ever used - we've never had our servers compromised when using Plesk.
Plesk is great for the admin
Not as great for the customer.
In this business security comes before customer preferences.

We'll be moving to PEM soon - I hope it's just as stable.

[James]

someone said they had no idea what the reseller CP from H-sphere looked like.

well as a reseller using h-sphere, i find it is a bit tricky to use at frist. I managed to find a few clients( a cupple of friends from irc and they brought a cupple more, yea me:) ) that helped me get used to the sytem. at first I was like hrmmm this is a big pain in the :rolleyes: umm yea.

but after i got used to it i found it to be realy easy.
BTW i was using plesk before this so all the new stuff in h-sphere,
besides setting up the accounts and setting plans, was kinda new to me ands how the CP handled them and how it is organised in the pannel.

and yes i know how you fell about plesk i did an upgrade on it and man it shut down everything on the system(note to self NEVER do a RPM upgrade on a standerd install of red hat:bigeyes: :crazy: :yikes: )
one plesk brakes it does it good:)
James

[no1v2]

Why was Webmin included in this poll? Sure, it's a "control panel," but then so is the Windows Control Panel, and you didn't include that :D From the other choices in this thread it looks like you mean to ask what web-based web hosting control panel we prefer. While Webmin is related to those and *could* be used as one, it isn't designed to be and isn't trying to compete with them.

Anyways, I use Ensim on my server (personal server, I don't run a web hosting business), and I like almost everything about it over the other choices listed. That doesn't mean I think it's the best for everyone, just for me.

Edit: I didn't read the whole thread, so I probably repeated a bunch of stuff.

[Operator]

How is the new Ensim Pro v3.5?

[no1v2]

I haven't tried it yet, but from what Ensim's site shows it looks nice. I'm waiting for my host to upgrade my server (it's the LH version, so they have to do it via ServerExchange). IMO the $170 one-time upgrade fee that LS 3.1 users need to pay is fair, but I like the $40 fee my host is selling LH 3.5 to us for even more :cool:

[Living Media]

I have used Plesk, Ensim, and CPanel from the client perspective, as well as a pair of custom control panels; and while I tend to know what I'm doing, Ensim gave me a headache. It wasn't very intuitive. Plesk was a tad slow, and again, not very intuitive. CPanel speaks regular-person English, and it's the first control panel I had access to as a reseller - so I'm not sure how easy it is to create custom skins for Ensim or Plesk.

I look at CPanel as the AOL of hosting control panels. It's pretty, it speaks normal-person-speech, and it has a lot of features and (with a little bit of skinning and text editing) makes them easy to understand and use.

Someone further back in the thread posted, "You'd prefer ease of use and features over stability?" Isn't that part of why people still flock to AOL and won't leave? Never mind Borgisoft and it's butterfly branding - AOL got people to try the service through ad blitzes and those accursed mailings; but without the approachable software, people likely would have tried some other service that promised ease of use.

[Robert]

Cpanel may have some bugs (ok ok.. has alot of bugs), but it offers the most features compared to Plesk and Ensim and it's much easier for all our clients to use.

Cpanel is the best.

[Steve]

CPANEL