An Exploration of Hosting Control Panels

The environment of web hosting is extremely competitive at the moment and these conditions have created an environment where firms are aggressively competing on price to offer numerous hosting plans at an attractive cost. If firms can’t compete on price they are forced to stand out in other ways. There are a number of different ways a firm can make a strong offering to consumers and these include building the site, providing a domain name at no extra charge and the overall fee. However, the major element for many consumers is the Control Panel. Therefore, the website that you have and what you want for it will play a huge role in determining which web host is best for you. The way that a web host maintains control to organize a customers site is through the software they provide and this comes in the shape of the Control Panel. Every single action and activity that is undertaken on a website is maintained through the Control Panel. These actions can include anything ranging from creating FTP accounts, operating the email server for the client or compiling statistical data. No matter what operating platform you use, be it Windows or Linux there will be a Control Panel for your specific platform or one that can cater for both.

What control panels are suitable for Windows Platform

There are certain web hosting control panels that work only for Windows platform. Hosting Accelerator and Helm are the typical examples of Windows only web hosting control panel. However, Helm is one of the most popular Windows only web hosting control panel due to its several customer friendly features. One of the most outstanding features of Helm is the billing information as most all the normally used control panels do not posses billing information within the control panel. The only exception is the H-sphere. Moreover, Helm is also very convenient to operate as well as has a very good standard interface.

Benefits of using Helm:

* Server Management: It can manage unlimited servers, domains and users and can also promptly add or remove servers. The Helm has integration with MailEnable, SmarterMail, Merak, IMail, MDaemon, Mail Servers and hMailServer as well as with Serv-U FTP, Microsoft FTP, Gene6 FTP Server, MySQL Server, and Microsoft SQL Server etc. It also supports Perl, PHP ASP, ASP.NET, and ColdFusion.

* Cost of the service: Helm offer a great deal of freedom with regards their billing process as customers can either use the Helm one or take advantage of the billing system from any other external party. This freedom is also extended to allowing the customer to operate in the currency of their choosing and how they want to distribute or view the invoices. Customers are able to choose between HTML and plain text format.

* Managing customers: An additional feature of the control panel provided via web hosting is that it allows hosting plans to be created for resellers. In addition to this, there is the ability to quantify how different resource limits are being filled with respect to transferring data, the use of domains, emails and the amount of disk-space that is on offer.

What control panels are suitable for Linux Platform:

There are some web hosting control panels that only operate on the Linux platform and these would include DirectAdmin, cPanel and Interworks. Many people like the services offered by DirectAdmin as they are availale for a low cost and is an extremely easy and convenient control panel to use. Similarly, many people choose Interworx as they find it a simple interface and it too offers a variety of additional features. However, these control panels cannot match the popularity of the cPanel service, which is by far the most coveted Linux based control panel. The cPanel service serves in excess of ten styles of Linux. One of the reasons why many of the companies who provide a web hosting facility like cPanel is due to the low cost of its hosting. There are also other benefits of this brand of software package which provides a great number of other services. These services include deploy applications, provide the ability for customer accounts, offer an account transferring service between servers, provides a secure server and many other key features.

Benefits of using Helm:

* Statistics of how the website is performing: With the amount of statistical tools and facilities offered by cPanel it is possible for any website owner to correctly analyze and calculate the traffic that is on their site. Not every hosting provider offers this service as many view it as a drain in their resources and would prefer not to offer the service to customers. If this an important aspect for a website owner, it is in their interest to ensure their choice of web host actually offers the service.

* Managing the email process: Many website owners are keen to have the power to generate or destroy email accounts and the cPanel control panel allows this facility. There is also a facility based in Webmail which offers every client the opportunity to access their emails online. There are further facilities offered by cPanel with regards to email, one of which is the ability to instruct a forwarder to move an email account to another. There is also the ability to generate auto-responders that will provide an automated response to customers.

* File Manager and FTP: FTP access is required to upload files and cPanel is capable of offering this facility and this is one of the most important features a website should be offering to its clients. Another thing that cPanel allows is for new FTP accounts to be registered so other people can have access the website. The power to restrict and specify access rights regarding certain files or folders will always remain with the website owner and the hosting company. Not everyone is happy with using an FTP package to load their files to a website and they can use the cPanel File Manager instead. This will grant the user to ability to unzip files, place files upon their server and be able to duplicate or erase any files.

Control panels that can be used on both the Linux and Windows platforms:

There are certain web hosting control panels, which work for both Linux and Window based websites. The Ensim, H-Sphere and Plesk are the most common examples of such control panels. The H-Sphere offers several features that range from key functionalities to complete automation. However, it is the Plesk which is the most popular control panel for Linux and Windows platforms. Most of the web hosting companies that serve both Linux and Windows hosting customers opt for Plesk. Its interface looks quite like the Windows XP and is an expensive option as it serves both the platforms.

Features and advantages of Plesk:

* Shared Hosting: The Plesk offer a self administrating and identical multi-platform design that enables to perfectly manage the shared hosting environment. Even the non technical people can conveniently setup, create, and manage accounts.

* The ability to have dedicated hosting: A good number of technically proficient clients would like to undertake their own dedicated hosting and Plesk and its control panel facilitates this by means of its RPM installation and its modular design. There are a whole host of tools on offer to the client and these include XML-API and other unique 3rd party applications.