2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: i-MSCP

i-MSCP is open-sourced and aims to be a good multi-server control panel for both personal and professional (i.e., hosting providers) usage. There is no one particularly outstanding facet of this web panel, but there is an active community around it.

i-MSCP - internet Multi Server Control Panel

i-MSCP - internet Multi Server Control Panel is an open-source software that allows to manage shared hosting environments on Linux servers.

i-MSCP aims to provide an easy-to-use Web interface for end-users, and to manage servers without any manual intervention on the filesystem.

i-MSCP was designed for professional Hosting Service Providers (HSPs), Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and IT professionals.

➠ Features

➠ Source

➠ Demo

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: ISPmanager

ISPmanager is a Linux-based, flexible control panel offered by ISPsystem, a leading provider of hosting automation solutions in Russia. For nearly two decades, ISPmanager has grown to become one of the most popular web control panels in Eastern European nations, with rising popularity in other territories. This powerful panel is offered in two editions; both are equipped to handle unlimited domains and users, and can be customized to meet your branding needs.

ISPmanager Lite is designed for managing VPSs and dedicated servers.

ISPmanager Business is ideal for shared or reseller hosting.

ISPmanager is a commercial product with features similar to premium control panels, however, the price point is on the lower end of the spectrum comparatively, so many end users find this option to be a better value. ISPmanager’s rich feature set and affordable cost combination are what make us proud to help introduce the software to the US market.

Features

ISPmanager Lite Features

ISPmanager Lite lets you easily manage your personal server and maintain websites.

1. Web-Server Management

Quickly set up and manage web-servers. Install popular CMS and create sites.

2. Users

Create and manage accounts, set limits, and grant different permissions.

3. Files

Manage files and FTP users via panel. Set permissions on files & directories.

4. Security

Install SSL certificates on web-servers domains. Manage Firewall.

5. DNS

Easily create domain zones and edit domain records.

6. Branding

Add your own corporate logo, change colours of panel and website’s link.

7. Mailboxes

Create mailboxes, configure aliases and set up mail spam filters.

8. Domains

Create and manage web domains. Install SSL certificates on them.

9. Backups

Schedule backups to external storage with automatic backup system.

10. Databases

Easily create and store databases. Manage user access limits.

11. PHP Versions

Set various PHP versions for different domains using built-in PHP-selector.

12. Website builder Site.pro

The easiest way to build a website directly from ISPmanager 5.

Pricing

Demo & 14-Day Free Trial

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: InterWorx

InterWorx comes in two package versions: NodeWorx (to manage a server) and SiteWorx (to manage a site). Interworx has a nice plugin system, which allows for quick installs of applications, much like the Softaculous web package manager. InterWorx also has a command line interface.

Features

InterWorx is perhaps the most scalable and reliable solution available for managing a website, server, or hosting business.  Here, we'll look at some features that make it unique.

1. NODEWORX

 NodeWorx is the system administrator interface for managing server-wide behavior and hosting (SiteWorx) accounts.

When you log into NodeWorx, the first thing you see is NodeWorx Home, which gives you an at-a-glance look at:

➠ The current status of system services
➠ Graphs showing recent CPU, Memory, and Bandwidth Usage
➠ General server info

From there, you can navigate using the menu or use the Quick Search feature to get where you need to go.

2. SITEWORX

SiteWorx is the website owner interface that you and your customers can use to manage your domains, email, and other hosting features.

When you log into SiteWorx, the first thing you see is SiteWorx Home, which gives you an at-a-glance look at:

➠ Your hosting account features
➠ Your current bandwidth usage
➠ Links to common tasks based on your recent usage

Demo
Pricing

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: Core-Admin

Core-Admin was designed as a centralized and highly connected solution that provides support for managing multi-servers using a single web administration console. This includes an advanced permission system and monitoring system. There is a “Free Web Edition” that is limited to handle 10 domains.

1. Features

Core-Admin is a complete and extensible solution to manage your servers in a global manner. Now you will be able to connect your end users with your servers’ resources with a few clicks. At the same time, it will provide a global view of all your system while allowing you to manage instantly each server connected.

➠ Centralized design

Core-Admin provides you a centralized administration console that will help you to manage, monitor and administrate your servers easily.

Designed to support hundred of servers, Core-Admin allows secure access to your  set of servers with a single credential in a quick manner, so you easily do manage operations over all of your servers with a few clicks.

➠ Powerful monitoring system

Core-Admin comes with a complete and extensible set of internal checkers, log watching, file system watching and much more. This will provide you valuable information about the current internal state of all your servers.

With an automatic self-discovery design that will help you to deploy all checkers that support your system, Core-Admin checking system will save you lot of time by spotting the point of failure as it happens.

➠ Core-Admin ISP ready

Core-Admin Web Edition and Core-Admin Free Web Edition provides an specific solution carefully designed to meet the needs of Hosting Providers about handling Mail servers, Web servers, Ftp servers and Dns servers.

Along with those applications, Core-Admin provides valuable applications and security options like specific web files monitoring to detect common hackings, automatic IP blocking for login failures in various services or mail IP sending tracking to detect unauthorized usage of your servers.

All these elements makes Core-Admin Web Edition a great choice if you have to provide hosting services or to just manage your sites in a secure manner.

➠ Integrated real-time log watching

Core-Admin provides an integrated solution to track your server logs and any other custom log you want as they progress. This means Core-Admin log watcher consumes it as it grows and checks that content, giving you fresh information just when it happens.

➠ BEEP and WebSocket ready

Core-Admin uses BEEP (http://www.beepcore.org) to handle all connections created between the server, agents and end users. When WebSocket is available, it is used as transport for the BEEP protocol.

Using BEEP enables Core-Admin to have several on going and parallel operations under the same connection. This saves lots of resources at servers and agents.

➠ Extended browser support

Core-Admin is supported in all major browsers and it is regularly tested to ensure proper function across releases. Currently supported web browsers include: Google Chrome 13.0 or higher, Internet explorer 8 or higher, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 or higher, Opera 8.0 or higher and Safari 5.0 or higher.

Core-Admin web-client support is not limited only to the above indicated. There are many other web browsers supported because Core-Admin uses standard technologies that are compatible and well supported by web browsers.

➠ Lots of ready to use apps

Core-Admin comes with a set of ready to use applications to do many common tasks required on a daily basis. It provides from real time log analysis, to an integreated ip blocking system, easy to use cron management, external checkings, processes and services viewer and many more.

Along with base applications included, there are  Core-Admin editions (like Core Admin Web Edition), that includes especific applications designed for different scenarios.

➠ Powerful permission system

Core-admin includes a ready to use permission system that will allow platform adminstrators to delegate permissions over the entire platform or at machine, application or object level.

Its hierarchical design allows to delegate permission assignation to those users selected, enforcing  them to only give access to what they have been assigned.

➠ Security options

Core-Admin includes many security options that will help to improve your servers’ security. Core-Admin includes tools to detect and track many security threats like: ssh logins, changes into crontabs, unauthorized modifications into web files (for example hacked .php), misuse of your mailservers by tracking changing auth options or changing ip addresses, etc.

Along with the file system change detection (which looks for suspicious modifications), the log watcher also will help you block many unallowed login sequences and brute force attacks.

Core-Admin not only will provide you with lot of useful tools to manage your servers, but to help you improve your system security by tracking the state of the system to the minute.

➠ Integrated real-time file-system watching

Core-Admin log watcher provides a powerful and an integrated file system watching solution which will help you know to the minute changes produced in the file system at any of your servers. This integrated solution also provides useful features like content expression matching or detailed change reporting.

➠ Connection security: TLS

All connections done between Core-Admin agents, servers and clients connected are protected with 2048bits TLS certificates.

This ensures all traffic travels in secure manner between elements. This option is included in all Core-Admin editions.

➠ Integrated updating system

Core-Admin provides a powerful and easy to use updating system that will help you apply upgrades and security patches to Core-Admin software on all connected servers with a few clicks.

The most important feature of the updating system is that it allows you to update the central panel, agents and all applications connected to it from a single point (the central panel) so you save a lot of time by doing massive updates to all your systems.

➠ Extensible platform!

Yes, you can develop your own applications, checkers and collectors for Core-Admin so you can extend the platform to fit your needs.

Core-Admin is designed as a plataform to manage large set of servers. It allows you to develop and easily deploy new applications on top of it.

2. Demo

3. Pricing

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: DirectAdmin

DirectAdmin is a relatively lightweight control panel that supports Linux. It has all of the basic features of a control panel, including support for multi-customer setups. All of the sold licenses are “unlimited domain” licenses.

➢Features

1. Administrator features

Create / Modify Admins and Resellers
- Admins can create resellers or extra admins quickly and easily with this feature.

Reseller Packages
- Admins can create predefined account packages using this feature. When creating an account, the admin simply chooses a package instead of manually setting each account feature.

Show All Users
- This feature allows the admin to quickly view every single account on the system and sort this list in various ways.

DNS Administration
- This feature allows the admin to create, modify, or delete any DNS records on the server.

IP Manager
- This is where the admin sets the IP address available to the server. The admin can also allocate IP address to resellers from this menu.

Mail Queue Administration
- Tool to view mail queue and it's messages. Includes tools to take action on those messages.

System / Services Info
- The admin can view, stop, start, and restart services from this menu.

Complete Usage Statistics
- This feature provides the admin with a complete overview of system usage. Exact input and output from the server's Ethernet card is also monitored.

DNS Clustering
- DirectAdmin talks to other DirectAdmin machines to automatically transfer DNS data between them. It also has the ability to check the other server for a domain so as to not allow duplicate domains on your DA network.

SPAM fighting tools in DirectAdmin
- A wide varienty of SPAM-fighting tools are provided with DirectAdmin. Please check http://help.directadmin.com/item.php?id=577 for a full list.

Licensing / Updates
- The admin can view his or her license status and download the latest DirectAdmin security and software upgrades from this menu.

2. Reseller features

Create / List / Modify Accounts
- Account creation, listing, modification, and deletion is done quickly and easily.

User Packages
- Resellers can create predefined account packages using this feature. When creating an account, the reseller simply chooses a package instead of manually setting each account feature.

Reseller Statistics
- Resellers are provided with a complete overview of their total usage. Resellers may also sort data by users to quickly assess the overall situation.

Message All Users
- Resellers can quickly send a message to all their customers by using DirectAdmin's built in ticket support system.

Import / Manage Skins
- With this menu option, resellers can quickly import and apply new skins with the click of a button.

IP Assignment
- Resellers can allocate IP address to their customers by using this menu option.

System / Services Information
- By clicking this feature, resellers have instant access to server status and system information.

Name Servers
- Resellers can create personalized nameservers for their customers from this menu.

3. User features

E-mail Administration
- Users can create POP/IMAP accounts, catch-all e-mail addresses, forwarders, mailing lists, autoresponders, and webmail. Filters allow users to block mail by domain, keyword, and size. Adult Filter is also available.

FTP Management
- Users can create FTP accounts and set directory permissions for each account. Anonymous FTP is also supported.

DNS Menu
- Users can can add and remove records, change MX settings, and anything else that goes with full DNS control.

Statistics Menu
- Users have available every possible statistic about their account. More advanced options and Webalizer are also included.

Subdomains Menu
- Users can list, create, delete, and get statistics on subdomains.

File Manager
- A user-friendly and fast alternative to FTP. Includes every feature needed to build and maintain a web site.

MySQL Databases
- Users can easily create, modify, and delete MySQL databases from this menu.

Site Backup
- Using this powerful tool, users can backup and restore only what they want to. For example, account data but not web site files.

Error Pages
- Users can create custom messages and outputs for 401, 403, 404, and 500 error codes.

Directory Password Protection
- Users can password protect any directory with a username and password.

PHP Selector
- Allows the client to select which version of PHP should be associated with the .php extension.

Advanced Tools
- Users can install SSL certificates, view sever information and installed perl modules, set cron jobs, mime types, and apache handlers, and enable site redirection and domain pointers.

4. General features

Integrated Ticket Support System
- With DirectAdmin's integrated ticket support system, you'll provide better customer service with less hassle. "You have XX messages waiting" is displayed every time you sign in -- and you can set DirectAdmin to notify you of support requests by e-mail, ensuring that no request will be missed. If you prefer to offer support in a different way, simply turn this feature off.

Two-Factor Authentication
- Allows any DirectAdmin account to require the Two-Factor Authentication using a time-based code from a smart-phone app.

Plugin System
- Allows to extend DirectAdmin functionality easily. Plugins support Admin, Reseller and User levels.

Live Updates
- Server administrators can click the "licensing / updates" button to view the current license and version status. There is no need to manually download, extract, and install - DirectAdmin performs all updates automatically.

Completely Customizable
- DirectAdmin is designed to be as unique as your business. Every aspect of the DirectAdmin interface can be changed, and new designs are easily imported through the "skins" menu.

Automatic Recovery From Crashes
- DirectAdmin TaskQueue ensures that all services are up, all of the time. If something crashes, DirectAdmin will attempt to fix the problem by restarting the service. If this fails, DirectAdmin will notify the server administrator immediately.

All Licenses are Unlimited-Domain Licenses
- There is no limit to the amount of domains or user accounts that can be hosted with DirectAdmin.

We Support Your Customers Through Site-Helper
- Site-Helper is designed to help you and your customers use DirectAdmin. We provide full instructions on every DirectAdmin feature, along with plenty of pictures and examples.

➢ Demo
➢ Pricing

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: Plesk

Plesk is a leading control panel in the US that also captures roughly 75 to 80 percent of the European market. Featuring support for a breadth of Linux versions, as well as Windows compatibility, the panel comes in several editions, each tailored for specific hosting use cases.

The user interface is regarded as a bit cleaner than cPanel, but in terms of features, Plesk and cPanel don’t differ much. Both are in use by big hosting companies (often in a branded form) and many other customers.

Recently, Plesk became an independent company, and they’re passionately focused on keeping up with the ever-evolving Web. The panel’s creators target both hosting newbies and hardcore developers by making server management easy and efficient. The company is also investing heavily on the educational end of things — with content marketing to teach web professionals best practices for running a business online, marketing, and even storytelling.

Features

1. Host/OS Agnostic: Plesk can be installed on a wide variety of operating systems and is virtually host agnostic. If you are running any form of a popular Linux version (CentOS, Ubuntu, CloudLinux, etc) or even Windows, you can run Plesk. As an added bonus, you can even run Plesk inside a Docker container found on Docker Hub. This is a strong pull factor differentiating Plesk from cPanel, which only runs on CentOS.

2. Git Integration: In response to a complaint that many web panels don’t offer support for Git, a popular version control system used to track changes and site updates, Plesk added their Gitman extension. The extension is available for Plesk 12.5 and up, with full Git support being pulled into the core in an upcoming Plesk release.

3. Docker Integration: The October 2016 release will also update Plesk’s core to include Docker support — featuring a catalog of over 200,000 Docker images. This lets you launch Docker images straight from Plesk without touching the command line.

4. 1-Click SSL Security: Even those who are new to hosting tend to understand the need for SSL security. Unfortunately, it can be a pain to set up and keep up to date. With new services like Let’s Encrypt making it easier and easier to get SSL (TLS) on your site, there is no reason to leave your pages unsecured. Plesk will automatically handle obtaining a certificate and configuring database files to accommodate https-only access for you, so both your web panel and all sites you’re hosting on your server are secured. This will also include niceties like renewing your certificate, running HTTP2, or providing you with security details when your server is under attack.

5. 1-Click WordPress Hardening: An upcoming extension release will allow WordPress hosting customers to entrust their security management to Plesk with one click. Plesk will then manage plugin updates, bug fixes, and security patches for you.

➧ Demo

➧ Pricing

For the more dev savvy, the panel features support for numerous PHP versions out of the box, with Ruby, Python, and NodeJS support available via Phusion (or out of the box with Plesk Onyx release). Among the popular Linux distros supported are Ubuntu, CentOS, RHEL, Debian, and CloudLinux, with upgrade support for Ubuntu and Debian.

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2016's Ultimate Guide to Web Panels: cPanel & WHM

As the most widely used hosting control panel, cPanel & WHM™ includes both a user-level interface (cPanel) and a server management interface (WHM). The two interfaces pair seamlessly to offer intuitive hosting and site management for end-users and resellers, as well as server administration tools for hosting providers.

While cPanel is certainly the most popular control panel on the market, there are still people in the web hosting community who claim they don’t need a web panel. This is especially true of more tech-savvy folks. System Administrators, for example, may not see a need for a dashboard that facilitates work they know how to do manually.

Community Manager of cPanel Benny Vasquez is firm in her commitment not to sell people on something they don’t want or need. She instead asks potential clients to name tasks they hate doing but have to do regularly. Inevitably, tedious or mundane chores, like managing software updates or malware scans, come up as responses. “I never try to convince them they need something they don’t want, but I do show them where cPanel & WHM can solve the problems they’re encountering,” Benny said.

Helping users overcome hosting hurdles — tactfully helping hosts make more money and giving site owners a pleasant management experience — is where the cPanel team shines. They work tirelessly on “incremental motions” that add value and move the product toward becoming the most modularized, flexible panel on the web, according to Benny.

Though cPanel and WHM are only supported on Linux, Windows support can be achieved using a virtualization setup.

Features

1. Highly Responsive, Speedy Performance: The cPanel team has made speed and efficiency a priority in the latest releases. This has resulted in a memory usage reduction of more than 25% in version 60 compared to the previous release, and cPanel and WHM account-related feature speeds, such as account creation or termination, are up to 10 times faster than prior versions. Expect more memory for applications and faster page loading speeds.

2. Command Line Utilities: Since the addition of command line utilities, the cPanel API has become readily accessible to non-coders. If you can use a command line, you can use the API, which opens up doors for integration by even beginner programmers.

3. AutoSSL and SNI Support: SSL certificates are automatically installed for every domain on your server and kept updated. Whether you want to use Komodo, Let’s Encrypt, or another provider, the SSL encryption is free and the certificates will be kept active for the life of the cPanel account. With the addition of SNI support, cPanel users can now get domain-specific certificates for /cpanel, /whm, and /webmail redirects.

4. EasyApache 4 and PHP-FPM: While EasyApache 4 makes managing packages and dependencies simple and super speedy, PHP-FPM applies the same level of speed and security for your applications.

5. DNSSEC and PowerDNS: Backed by PowerDNS, secure your DNS zones through DNSSEC and shield yourself from one of the foremost threats on the Internet. DNSSEC verifies the server you’re connecting to, protecting your site from DNS cache poisoning.

➧ Demo

➧ Pricing

Benny told us the API is the tool hosts use most when integrating cPanel features with their own support systems, so the cPanel dev team ensures proper documentation. “That’s definitely our strength,” she said.

Meanwhile, from an end-user perspective, the team has committed to improving the usability and the overall experience of the user interface. Between updating JavaScript and switching from PNG- to SVG-formatted images, the company has optimized the cPanel and WHM environments for peak performance and usability.

You can only expect updates like these to continue coming from the cPanel and WHM crew. As they sit down quarterly to determine what’s next, their collective eye is always turned to their “North Star” — doing what’s best for their users.

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