Top Three Control Panels for Reseller Hosting

Posted on August 14th, 2009
A blog post by DN (3 Comments)

Choosing a control panel is one of the most important decisions you will have to make in regard to your reseller hosting account.  This decision will either help you save time and money or result in a lot of frustration and heartache.  In this article, we will overview three of the best options you have for your reseller hosting control panel.

1.) cPanel

cPanel is renowned throughout the web hosting industry for its ease of use and broad range of features.  The standard cPanel reseller account comes included with two separate applications for managing your business: WHM and cPanel.  Short for Web Host Manager, WHM is the software used to create hosting accounts and packages.  It allows you to add and spend customer accounts, view resource usage, park domains, change passwords, install SSL certificates and perform various other management functions.  The end-user version of cPanel is provided to your customers, giving them the ability to maintain their websites without direct intervention from the reseller or server administrator.  One of the biggest draws of a cPanel reseller account is Fantastico, a third-party application that provides your customers with a way to enhance their web presence by incorporating a variety of powerful add-on programs.  The biggest downside of cPanel is that the software is platform-specific and only supports the Linux operating system at this time.

2.) H-Sphere

The H-Sphere control panel is designed to support Linux and Windows platforms, giving administrators the ability to control a number of different servers from a single, centralized console.  H-Sphere itself acts as a server, offering a range of automated features such as account configuration, payment processing, email notification and domain name registration among others.  It also includes an integrated billing module and offers support for than 20 major payment gateways.  Though a very capable solution, H-Sphere is known to have a much steeper learning curve than other control panels.  This is mainly due to the inclusion of so many features and the overall design of the software that requires you to administrator far beyond the original interface.  With that said, H-Sphere can be mastered and calls for no knowledge of common, yet often perplexing technologies such as HTML, PHP or FTP.

3.) Plesk

Plesk is highly regarded as one of the most stable and secure control panels available.  Reseller and end-users alike both appreciate its well designed interface, simple navigation and professional appearance.  Plesk offers a number of features for the benefit of reseller and their customers, including a fully integrated site builder, an application installer similar to cPanel’s Fantastico and spam filtering with the popular Spam Assassin program.  This control panel also integrates with other solutions designed by SWsoft, its original developer.  The most notable is HSP, which provides automation to facilitate account creation, payment processing, email notification and other administrative tasks.

Conclusion

All of the control panels mentioned in this article make a suitable option for your reseller hosting endeavors.  Although each has its advantage and disadvantages, all offer a high degree of automation and a wealth of features for both the reseller and their customers.