We are often asked which panel we would recommend. Since there is a variety of different panels with different functions and focus, we cannot easily answer this question. Currently we offer cPanel, Plesk, LAMP und Webmin, which we will introduce here.
cPanel/WHM
cPanel is a webhosting panel which allows to administrate a great number of users in an easy way and configure the installed services. In order to avoid security breaches many settings are pretty restrictive, which may cause issues due to the demands of your software. In addition, without plugins from external developers, it would not be possible to use nginx as an example. The software cPanel is divided into two parts, the interface for users is called cPanel, the administration interface WHM (WebHostMananger).
The developers provide a really detailed documentation which explains nearly all functions cPanel/WHM provides:
https://documentation.cpanel.net/
If errors occur or special questions appear which are not answered within the documentation, it is always a good possibility to ask for this within the official forum:
And for those who do not know cPanel/WHM or want to check out what was changed before updating the own installation, a demo and the changelog are available:
https://cpanel.com/demo/
https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/CL/Change+Logs
If you are a new user, you may check out their YouTube channel, too:
https://www.youtube.com/user/cpaneltv
Plesk Obsidian
Plesk understands itself as a platform for developers, thus it has a lot of software already installed and software like Docker, Ruby, etc. can be installed with a few clicks. In addition to this, a lot of features can be installed, using free or paid addons, which can be installed with a few clicks, too. Nevertheless, it is even an alternative to start a webhosting. At the moment, three different versions are offered, all details regarding the differences and the official addons can be found within the following website provided by Plesk:
Plesk Editions
Plesk provides a detailed documentation, too:
https://docs.plesk.com/en-US/obsidian/
In addition, a knowledge base with the most common problems and errors – and corresponding solutions – is provided:
https://support.plesk.com/hc/en-us
Moreover, the developers and community are active within the forum and provide assistance in case of problems:
Webmin
Webmin is no classic interface for webhosting, it is a server administration panel which provides a graphical interface to configure the installed services with the goal making server administration easier. An overview of the supported services can be found within the official documentation:
http://doxfer.webmin.com/Webmin/Webmin_Modules
In addition to the supported modules it is no problem to add additional software via SSH or develop more addons for Webmin to extend the list of services, this is possible due to the fact, that the source code is provided via GitHub:
https://github.com/webmin/webmin
As already mentioned, Webmin is by default no webhosting interface like cPanel or Plesk but there was an additional software stack developed which provides the functionality required for webhosting:
Home (site root)
If you only want to use the server as a mail server, cPanel, Plesk and even Virtualmin may be a little bit to heavy, you can think about Webmin, too, since there is an additional addon which provides the basic mail server software:
http://www.usermin.com/usermin.html
LAMP
LAMP has already been offered since a few years and is not a panel like the other ones already mentioned, it is a software stack which contains (Linux,) Apache, MySQL and PHP; this is the basic software to start with your own web presentation. We already published a tutorial about this called “LAMP made easy”.
Webmin + LAMP
After we had started offering LAMP, we were often asked why it is not possible to select both Webmin and LAMP. Since we always note down your feedback, we started offering both solutions as one package, so that you can start directly with your webpage after we have sent out the login details to you.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are different Panels on offer and the decision, which one to choose, also depends on the chosen operating system: cPanel can only be combined with CentOS, whereas Plesk can also be used with Windows Server. By the way: You can test Plesk one month for free (available for our VPS) and get used to the many functions this panel offers!