I have a company, PierHosting.com. Currently we offer IRC, Gaming and Web dedicated servers with cPanel and Direct admin as control panel options.

I just wanted to know, what do you guys think of me offering other panels, such as Ensim and Plesk? Should I try and sell them all or should I just try and stay with cPanel / Direct Admin?

Hi Gordy,

If youre comfortable with cPanel, I would stick with it.

But, if youre thinking about offering alternative panels, particularly for hosts, I would take a good long look at hsphere.

Im sure everyone here is sick of seeing me wave the hsphere flag - but honestly - for webhosts and their customers - there is NO BETTER cp available... Its popularity is starting to pick up, especially with hosts experiencing rapid growth - cPanel just will not cut it any more...

Sorry, my honest opinion - let the flaming begin

Stick with cPanel and Direct Admin.

Ensim is a nightmare to manage, not sure about Plesk. But, less to worry about.

Oh, if you guys have not heard there is again a new Linux Redhat 9 kernel. Time to upgrade about 4 servers.

I had a small hsphere account a while ago and found it very hard to use. That was about a year ago. Maybe they have cleaned it up.

Hi Turnkey,

That makes sense - their first version wasnt that smooth and honestly was a little buggy.

Thats too be expected though will all the functionality they have combined into 1 package.

Their current version is very stable and has been cleaned up. We are also one of the first demoing their latest beta version. We are running it on a small server with some test accounts. Got to tell you, we're VERY impressed.

Here's a small write up about where they stand now - still some known issues - but the product runs pretty smooth (obviously waiting for them to resolve the problem with over 100 users before we implement )


Date: Dec 18, 2003

I am happy to announce the release of H-sphere 2.4 beta 2. This is the first public release of h-sphere, and
there is many more to come. A number of features will be added to 2.4 in the next few weeks. The main
purpose of this version is to test core changes in the live environment. Beta 2 should not be installed by
anyone with more then 100 live accounts. It also has an issue with Windows Shared SSL - and should not be
used by companies who use windows shared SSL. Future versions will resolve thouse issues.

Main changes include H-Sphere 2.4:
Redesigned billing system, with a goal of simplifying billing and billing reporting
Packaging system that provides an easy way to extend h-sphere functionality
Switch from JServ to Tomcat as h-sphere backend engine
Availability of remote XML api to allow scripting of h-sphere functionality
Redesign of internal trouble ticketing system.

Additional changes that will be available in the next beta:
New h-sphere skin
Redesigned mail subsistem (that will include spam & virus filtering)


More information on H-Sphere 2.4 beta 2 is available at:
http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentatio...s.html#24_beta2

To request an upgrade, please, email to support@psoft.net

Best Regards,
Igor Seletskiy

I think you should stick with cPanel/WHM since most people know how to use it and it is user friendly

I think most people are happy if you have cPanel available, some more advanced users, or people that dont need everything offered through cPanel might be interested in plesk, or maybe even ensim.

There are some people that just wont change the control panel they use, nomatter how much better another is, I think there are a lot of people like this for ensim.

Im not an ensim fan, I would rather use cPanel for users and the admin side is very easy.

I didnt like DA at all...
I only had it for a while but I didnt like the admin side which was just like the end user, but I want something a bit more advanced for admins and didnt really like that layout of it.
The end user was just like cPanel though, wasnt too much difference.

its really up to you, it also depends if you can use the other control panels so you can provide support for them

I will stick with what you have