Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

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faris
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Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by faris »

Dear all,

Has anyone *recently* done any research on good quality hosting control panels as alternatives to Plesk? I know we've occasionally discussed this sort of thing before here, but the last time we did so was quite a while ago.

Ideally I'm looking for *active*, open source, community supported projects that use standard Apache/MySQL and run on Centos/RH. Webmin/hostmin are not sufficiently good in terms of GUI.

I have found a few possibilities with a Google search, but they all seem to be in beta or development has stopped etc. www.openpanel.com looks good, for example, but development has been very slow.

And God knows that's happen to BlueQuartz.

Ignoring open source, what about "low cost"? I mean affordable to normal humans here with no ongoing subscription prices other than for SuS/Support..

Faris.
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BruceLee
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by BruceLee »

have you ever evaluated this control panel?
http://ispsystem.com/en/
dayo
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by dayo »

This one is opensource and seems to be actively developed: http://www.ispconfig.org/ispconfig-3.

Never tried it before though. There is Virtualmin as well which I have tried but found to opaque as in, I struggled with the philosophy but it is reliable and good.
faris
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by faris »

Thanks guys.

Both look interesting.

I think I've investigated ispsystem.com before, and liked what I saw. Something about it makes me uncomfortable though. I can't put my finger on it.

There's one particularly impressive thing about it - If you look at the forums you'll see people experiencing a problem which is confirmed as a bug and then fixed in a matter of days (rather than months, which is often the case for Plesk).

Any other suggestions?

Faris.
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BruceLee
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by BruceLee »

I know, maybe it's the fact that the products seem to be very advanced but you (just like me) never heard or read about them!?
I think it's really worth testing.
faris
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by faris »

I'd never heard of Plesk when I purchased it (PSA 2.0). I did so on the recommendation of friend I'd been to school with 20 years ago! It was a risk. But a good one, as it turned out, until they went SaaS. I'm not against SaaS, just the prices they want, which is not proportional to the quality of the software. I expect serious problems (like email not working due to a bug) to be sorted immediately, not two releases and several months later. They should have stuck to supporting a smaller number of OSes. Plesk 9 is a mess. I think Plesk 9 was Parallel's Vista. I've said so before -- then Microsoft copied me when talking about Apple and the iPhone 4. I was wrong about 9.5 being the W7 equivalent though. Looks like Plesk 10 is more like it.

Anyhooo.....basically I think you are right. I'm very cautious with "unknown" companies these days after that incident where a hosting company had their servers wiped out due to an apparent flaw in the hosting control panel they used.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/08/webhost_attack/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/09 ... der_death/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/06/10 ... follow_up/

Faris.
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BruceLee
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by BruceLee »

I don't have that much experience with Plesk since I started with Plesk 8.0 which was faulty at some points.
But I think Plesk 9.5.2 is doing I good job for me. I added and changed a few things and it runs fine.
You're right. It's a shame that parallels takes so long to fix or implement things.
Concerning the price policy I totally agree. It's way to expensive im my opinion.

Wow, I did not hear or read about this attack. Typical for journalism in these days :(
I have a complete backup for every day of my server if anything happens.
A good and tested backup scenario is a lifesaver.
Getting back to topic I think testing quite "unknown" companies is necessitative.
Before testing you never know if you found a gem and tomorrows leader or just crap.
BruceLee
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by BruceLee »

One project to have an eye on:

http://www.froxlor.org

Looks very clean and structured.
francis_brosnan
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by francis_brosnan »

Hello,

You can also consider Core-Admin (http://www.core-admin.com). It provides a web administration panel to handle several servers at the same time. It has different editions including an ISP ready edition to handle everything around mail, ftp, dns and web (http://www.core-admin.com/portal/get-it/web-edition).

Core-Admin Web Edition (for ISP professionals) is available as Free Web Edition (without any domain limit) and the commercial version that includes technical support and extended options (like user delegation, connecting more machines to your console...).

Hope you find it useful,
Best Regards!
faris
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Re: Latest [open source] Plesk alternatives?

Unread post by faris »

That looks interesting. thanks.

I know I've said this elsewhere, but Plesk 12 looks really good though. Since 11.5 we have been back to getting new, useful features in new releases, and Parallels really seems to have got a handle on the issue of fixing bugs in the past few years.
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