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

Control panel License Free Open Source Alive (last release) BSD Linux Windows FrontendBackend Plugin Support VCS IPv6 SupportMultiserver Support
AlternC GPL 2 YesYes2017/11/07 [1] NoYesNo PHP PHP / Perl / Shell script Yes git YesNo
Domain Technologie Control GNU LGPL YesYes2013/04/04Limited FreeBSD supportYesNo PHP MySQL ?gitNo?
Froxlor GPL YesYes2023/10/13NoYesNo PHP PHP, MySQL No git YesNo
i-MSCP GPL, MPL YesYes2018/05/16NoYesNo PHP Perl, C Yes git YesNo
ISPConfig BSD YesYes2022/11/22NoYesNo PHP PHP, MySQL Yes git YesYes
Kloxo (formerly Lxadmin) AGPL YesYes2011/11/13NoCentOS (6 not currently supported) or Red Hat EL 5.x No PHP PHP, MySQL No git NoYes
Usermin BSD styleYesYes2019/08/17 [2] YesYesNo Perl Perl ?tarball??
Virtualmin GPL YesYes2023-09-15 [3] Yes YesNo Perl Perl YestarballYesPartial
Webmin BSD styleYesYes2023-11-08; 3 months agoYesYesPartial Perl Perl Yes git YesYes
Zentyal (formerly eBox Platform) GPL YesYes2015/10/22NoYesNo Perl Perl YesNogit?

Proprietary control panels

Control panel License Free Open Source Alive (last release) BSD Linux Windows FrontendBackendPlugin SupportHTTP/2 SupportIPV6 SupportMultiserver Support
cPanel & WHM Proprietary NoNo2020/04/06 [4] FreeBSD version retiredYes EOL Perl Perl YesYes [5] YesYes
DirectAdmin Proprietary NoNo2019/09/25 [6] FreeBSD version retiredYesNo C++, scripts, PHP, Vue.js C++, scripts, PHP YesYes [7] [8] YesYes
HDE Controller X Proprietary NoNo2012/07/24NoYesNo PHP PHP ?NoYesYes
Hosting Controller Proprietary NoNo2014/12/24NoYesYes .NET MSSQL YesNoYesYes
InterWorx Proprietary NoNo2019/08/28 [9] NoYesNo PHP PHP, MySQL YesYesYesYes
Plesk Proprietary NoNo2019/06/04 [10] NoYesYes PHP PHP/MySQL YesYes [11] YesYes
Virtualmin Pro Proprietary NoNo2016/01/05 [3] 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
HDE Controller X YesYes 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 [12] YesYesYesYesYes
Domain Technologie Control YesYesYesYesYesYes
HDE Controller X YesYesYesYesYesYes
Hosting Controller YesYesYesYesYesYes
i-MSCP OptionalOptionalYesOptionalOptionalOptional
InterWorx YesYesYesYesYesYes
ISPConfig YesYesYesYesPossibleYes
Kloxo YesYesYesYesYesYes
Plesk YesYesYesYesYesYes
Usermin YesYesYesYesNoNo
Virtualmin YesYesYesYesYesYes
Virtualmin Pro YesYesYesYesYesYes
Webmin YesYesYesYesYesYes

Related Research Articles

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

Webmin is a web-based server management control panel for Unix-like systems. Webmin allows the user to configure operating system internals, such as users, disk quotas, services and configuration files, as well as modify and control open-source apps, such as BIND, Apache HTTP Server, PHP, and MySQL.

cPanel is web hosting control panel software developed by cPanel, LLC. It provides a graphical interface (GUI) and automation tools designed to simplify the process of hosting a web site to the website owner or the "end user". It enables administration through a standard web browser using a three-tier structure. While cPanel is limited to managing a single hosting account, cPanel & WHM allows the administration of the entire server.

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

Horde is a free web-based groupware.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roundcube</span> Open-source web-based IMAP email client

Roundcube is a web-based IMAP email client. Roundcube's most prominent feature is the pervasive use of Ajax technology. Roundcube is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL-3.0-or-later), with exceptions for skins and plugins.

Selenium is an open source umbrella project for a range of tools and libraries aimed at supporting browser automation. It provides a playback tool for authoring functional tests across most modern web browsers, without the need to learn a test scripting language. It also provides a test domain-specific language (Selenese) to write tests in a number of popular programming languages, including JavaScript (Node.js), C#, Groovy, Java, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby and Scala. Selenium runs on Windows, Linux, and macOS. It is open-source software released under the Apache License 2.0.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Google Web Toolkit</span> Free Java library

Google Web Toolkit, or GWT Web Toolkit, is an open-source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain JavaScript front-end applications in Java. It is licensed under Apache License 2.0.

Many computer user interfaces use a control panel metaphor to give the user control of software and hardware features. The control panel consists of multiple settings including display settings, network settings, user account settings, and hardware settings. Control panels are also used by web applications for easy graphical configuration. Some services offered by control panels require the user to have admin rights or root access.

DirectAdmin is a graphical web-based web hosting control panel allowing administration of websites through a web browser. The software is configurable to enable standalone, reseller, and shared web hosting from a single instance. DirectAdmin also permits management of server tasks and upgrades to package software from within the control panel - simplifying server and hosting configuration.

<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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SharePoint</span> Web application platform

SharePoint is a web-based collaborative platform that integrates natively with Microsoft 365. Launched in 2001, SharePoint is primarily sold as a document management and storage system, although it is also used for sharing information through an intranet, implementing internal applications, and for implementing business processes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual Studio</span> Code editor and IDE

Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such as Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Shell</span> Graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment

GNOME Shell is the graphical shell of the GNOME desktop environment starting with version 3, which was released on April 6, 2011. It provides basic functions like launching applications and switching between windows, and is also a widget engine. GNOME Shell replaced GNOME Panel and some ancillary components of GNOME 2.

Hosting Controller is a multi-purpose cloud control panel and Active Directory synchronization solution that operates out of Canada and offers Saas, Active Directory and Migration services to enterprises and service providers worldwide.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">API</span> Software interface between computer programs

An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs or components to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build or use such a connection or interface is called an API specification. A computer system that meets this standard is said to implement or expose an API. The term API may refer either to the specification or to the implementation. Whereas a system's user interface dictates how its end-users interact with the system in question, its API dictates how to write code that takes advantage of that system's capabilities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Construct (game engine)</span> Visual HTML5-based 2D game editor

Construct is an HTML5-based 2D video game engine developed by Scirra Ltd. It is aimed primarily at non-programmers, allowing quick creation of games through visual programming. First released as a GPL-licensed DirectX 9 game engine for Microsoft Windows with Python programming on October 27, 2007, it later became proprietary software with Construct 2, as well as switching its API technology from DirectX to NW.js and HTML5, as well as removing Python and adding JavaScript support and its plugin SDK in 2012, and eventually switched to a subscription-based model as a web app.

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">WebAssembly</span> Cross-platform assembly language and bytecode designed for execution in web browsers

WebAssembly defines a portable binary-code format and a corresponding text format for executable programs as well as software interfaces for facilitating interactions between such programs and their host environment.

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 2018-02-13.
  2. "Webmin". Webmin.com. Retrieved 20 September 2019.
  3. 1 2 "Webmin". Webmin.com. Retrieved 16 November 2023.
  4. "Change Logs - cPanel & WHM Documentation". cpanel.net. Retrieved 10 June 2019.
  5. "Support for HTTP/2 and Virtuozzo 7 - cPanel Blog". Blog.cpanel.com. 21 November 2017. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  6. "DirectAdmin Web Control Panel Version History". directadmin.com. Retrieved 25 September 2019.
  7. "http2 (BETA) Version 1.582". directadmin.com. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  8. "How-to: Enable HTTP/2 in Apache/Nginx/cURL". forum.directadmin.com. 25 January 2016. Retrieved 23 August 2019.
  9. "Version History - InterWorx". Interworx.com. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
  10. "Hosting Control Panels and Hosting Platforms: The Definitive Guide - Plesk". Plesk.com. 20 February 2018. Retrieved 13 August 2018.
  11. "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!"
  12. "ClamAV - How To". help.directadmin.com. 7 July 2014. Retrieved 23 August 2019.