Comparison of web hosting control panels

Last updated

The following tables compare general and technical information for a variety of web hosting control panel software packages.

Contents

License and operating system support

Free and open source control panels

Systems listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.

Control panel License Alive (last release) BSD Linux Windows FrontendBackend Plugin Support VCS IPv6 SupportMultiserver Support
AlternC GPL 2 2017-11-07 [1] NoYesNo PHP PHP / Perl / Shell script Yes git YesNo
Domain Technologie Control GNU LGPL 2013/04/04Limited FreeBSD supportYesNo PHP MySQL  ?gitNo ?
Froxlor GPL 2024-03-29 [2] NoYesNo PHP PHP, MariaDB or MySQL [3] No git YesNo
i-MSCP GPL, MPL 2018-05-16NoYesNo PHP Perl, C Yes git YesNo
ISPConfig BSD 2023-10-26; 6 months agoNoYesNo PHP PHP, MariaDB or MySQL [4] Yes git YesYes
Kloxo AGPL 2011/11/13NoCentOS (6 not currently supported) or Red Hat EL 5.x No PHP PHP, MySQL No git NoYes
Usermin BSD style2024-04-15 [5] YesYesNo Perl Perl  ?tarball ? ?
Virtualmin GPL 2023-09-15 [6] Yes YesNo Perl Perl YestarballYesPartial
Webmin BSD style2024-04-16; 12 days agoYesYesPartial Perl Perl Yes git YesYes
Zentyal GPL 2024-02-26; 2 months agoNoYesNo Perl Perl Yesgit ? ?

Proprietary control panels

Systems listed on a light purple background are no longer in active development.

Control panel Alive (last release) BSD Linux Windows FrontendBackendPlugin SupportHTTP/2 SupportIPV6 SupportMultiserver Support
cPanel & WHM 2024-04-19 [7] FreeBSD version retiredYes EOL Perl Perl YesYes [8] YesYes
DirectAdmin 2019/09/25 [9] FreeBSD version retiredYesNo C++, scripts, PHP, Vue.js C++, scripts, PHP YesYes [10] [11] YesYes
Hosting Controller 2014-12-24NoYesYes .NET MSSQL YesNoYesYes
InterWorx 2024-04-09 [12] NoYesNo PHP PHP, MySQL YesYesYesYes
Plesk 2024-04-16 [13] NoYesYes PHP PHP, MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL [14] YesYes [15] YesYes
Virtualmin Pro 2016/01/05 [6] YesYesNo Perl Perl YesNoYesPartial

Remote access

Some control panels allow shell (console) access to the underlying OS through a Java applet, requiring that the client-side computer use Java Virtual Machine software. Other control panels allow direct access using telnet or secure shell (SSH).

Control panel FTP Anonymous FTP Terminal File browse/upload/download HTTP frontend
cPanel & WHM YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
DirectAdmin YesYes SSH Yes
Domain Technologie Control Yes ? SSH Yes
Hosting Controller Yes ? ?Yes
i-MSCP YesNo SSH Yes
InterWorx YesYes SSH Yes
ISPConfig YesYes SSH No
Kloxo YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
Plesk YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
Usermin YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
Virtualmin YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
Virtualmin Pro YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes
Webmin YesYes SSH, Java AppletYes

Email management

While all control panel software below supports multiple email accounts, the features they provide vary.

Control panel Antivirus Antispam ForwardersMailbox quota DomainKeys DKIM
cPanel & WHM YesYesYesYesYesYes
DirectAdmin Yes [16] YesYesYesYesYes
Domain Technologie Control YesYesYesYesYesYes
Hosting Controller YesYesYesYesYesYes
i-MSCP OptionalOptionalYesOptionalOptionalOptional
InterWorx YesYesYesYesYesYes
ISPConfig YesYesYesYesPossibleYes
Kloxo YesYesYesYesYesYes
Plesk YesYesYesYesYesYes
Usermin YesYesYesYesNoNo
Virtualmin YesYesYesYesYesYes
Virtualmin Pro YesYesYesYesYesYes
Webmin YesYesYesYesYesYes

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Webmin</span> Web-based control panel for Unix-like systems

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horde (software)</span> Open-source groupware

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Nginx is a web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Russian developer Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004. Nginx is free and open-source software, released under the terms of the 2-clause BSD license. A large fraction of web servers use Nginx, often as a load balancer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Virtualmin</span>

Virtualmin is a domain hosting and website control panel which gives the ability to create and manage many domains, as well as simplify both automation and tasks. It is based on Webmin. Virtualmin is an alternative to cPanel and Plesk.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plesk</span> Web hosting and data center automation software

Plesk is a commercial web hosting and server data center automation software developed for Linux and Windows-based retail hosting service providers.

i-MSCP is a free and open-source software for shared hosting environments management on Linux servers. It comes with a large choice of modules for various services such as Apache2, ProFTPd, Dovecot, Courier, Bind9, and can be easily extended through plugins, or listener files using its events-based API.

Softaculous is a commercial script library that automates the installation of commercial and open source web applications to a website. Softaculous scripts are executed from the administration area of a website control panel, typically via an interface tool such as cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin and InterWorx. Softaculous applications typically create tables in a database, install software, adjust permissions, and modify web server configuration files.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AlternC</span>

AlternC is a set of open-source Web Hosting server management software for Linux/UNIX-like systems, whose aim is to promote self hosting by individuals or small structures, and provide its users with an easy web-based interface to manage a web and mail server.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">RocksDB</span> Embedded key-value database

RocksDB is a high performance embedded database for key-value data. It is a fork of Google's LevelDB optimized to exploit multi-core processors (CPUs), and make efficient use of fast storage, such as solid-state drives (SSD), for input/output (I/O) bound workloads. It is based on a log-structured merge-tree data structure. It is written in C++ and provides official language bindings for C++, C, and Java. Many third-party language bindings exist. RocksDB is free and open-source software, released originally under a BSD 3-clause license. However, in July 2017 the project was migrated to a dual license of both Apache 2.0 and GPLv2 license. This change helped its adoption in Apache Software Foundation's projects after blacklist of the previous BSD+Patents license clause.

Froxlor is a free and open-source web hosting control panel which originated from the SysCP project. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0.

References

  1. "AlternC". Alternc.com. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  2. "Index of /releases". files.froxlor.org. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  3. "Installation | froxlor Documentation". docs.froxlor.org. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  4. "The Perfect Server - Debian 12 (Bookworm) with Apache, BIND, Dovecot, PureFTPD and ISPConfig 3.2". HowtoForge. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  5. "Webmin". Webmin.com. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
  6. 1 2 "Webmin". Webmin.com. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
  7. "Change Logs - cPanel & WHM Documentation". cpanel.net. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
  8. "Support for HTTP/2 and Virtuozzo 7 - cPanel Blog". Blog.cpanel.com. 21 November 2017. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  9. "DirectAdmin Web Control Panel Version History". directadmin.com. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
  10. "http2 (BETA) Version 1.582". directadmin.com. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  11. "How-to: Enable HTTP/2 in Apache/Nginx/cURL". forum.directadmin.com. 25 January 2016. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  12. "Version History - InterWorx". Interworx.com. Retrieved 20 April 2024.
  13. "Change Log for Plesk Obsidian". docs.plesk.com. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  14. "Software Requirements for Plesk Obsidian". docs.plesk.com. Retrieved 2024-04-20.
  15. "Я предлагаю вам (Future Suggestions)" . Retrieved 11 November 2021. "Apr 13, 2016 / UPD: HTTP 2.0 support is now available in Plesk 12.5 MU#28!"
  16. "ClamAV - How To". help.directadmin.com. 7 July 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2019.