There is no question that cPanel is the biggest control panel used on the web market today. cPanel will allow their use to interface their remote servers or general web hosting needs. But, cPanel is not the cheapest way to manage your website nor is it without it’s own issues.
One of the biggest issues is the fact that cPanel has become so widely used. When people don’t use anything else, there isn’t much need for another control panel. The general outlook is that there isn’t anything on the market that is better than cPanel. However, the cost of using cPanel isn’t free. So what are some of the cPanel alternatives?
Web://cp
Web://cp was essentially where everything seems to have started from. The principal behind this was to give a user a good control panel written in basic PHP. The original site that offered this has become obsolete, but since web://cp was open source, it’s not all lost.
Web-cp.
Web-cp is what took place when web://cp phased out of existence. Web-cp is basically the big brother of web://cp. Pretty much like the original, web-cp is written in PHP, so it will probably take up a little bit of stress on your server. This could be good if your server doesn’t have all of the power needed to run a bunch of additional software packages. Dissimilar to cPanel, web-cp offers a 4-layer model that gives resellers a more granular system. This would allow for a control panel per user, a control panel for control of the domain, a control panel for resellers and a control panel for the server.
FlexCP
FlexCP is another open source solution that is likely to get much bigger over the next couple of years. This is a redeveloped version of web://cp. For advanced PHP users, the user interface is written in PHP. The theory behind this is that it will diminish the number of extra services that are running on the memory at any given moment.
Cube Panel Lite
Cube Panel Lite is basically a limited version of the Cube Panel, a software package that you must pay for. Since it is closed source, it is hard to find a lot of information on it, however, it is widely known that Cube Panel Lite can only used on one server and up to thirty domains.
Webmin
Webmin is a free and very impressive suite of control panel packages that give users a lot of control. Webmin is free and it’s open source that is licensed under BSD. Although they do offer a pay only solution, their free software should be enough. Webmin runs on Linux but can also be run on Windows with more software.
Plesk
Another alternative to cPanel is Plesk. Plesk is a pay only and a lot of people say it’s very sluggish. One advantage that Plesk does have over cPanel is the fact that it allows the user to implement anti-virus software.
Cube Panel
Much like cPanel, there are three levels of management that you can use with Cube Panel. This allows for reseller accounts, however, you have to pay for this. If you want to test the waters before investing, you can take advantage of Cube Panel’s 20-day trial version to see if you like it. As mentioned before, Cube Panel Lite may have everything that you’re looking for.
Direct Admin
This is also a pay only alternative to cPanel that gives a user an unlimited licence for about three hundred dollars. When you purchase this software, you can get up to ninety days of customer support to help you when needed. This is easy to implement onto your server and gives a great substitute to the other varieties of options you have at bay.
For whatever reason that you’re not happy with your cPanel features, there are good alternatives. If you’re just playing around with a website and want to leave it at that, you might want to go for a free alternative. If you are experienced with PHP and other scripting procedures, you can weight your options for a different pay service. Choosing an alternative to cPanel is really up to your needs and experience.