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Alternative to cPanel software

zalvis

zalvis

Member
As we all know, after acquisition of cPanel, the board of directors are constantly pushing to prices on every year, and it seems they have stopped their innovation towards new technologies.

Is this time to migrate to another control panel? But most important part, will customers who are already got used to with cPanel, accept the migration? Because, at the end the customers will use it for their daily needs.

In the 2024, which are the control panels looks promising to you and why? I used DA for some projects, but found its UI outdated, so share your opinion.
 
I've been contemplating just building my own like I used to, but dread having to finesse the email systems. With qmail it wasn't too bad, but that was a different time.

My fleet is 100% DirectAdmin. I've been using it since 2007 or so without issue.

I don't think my clients would mind changing. People don't necessarily want to re-learn something, but if you offer a good knowledge base and make the change infrequent, they'll probably adapt without complaints.

My unscientific guess is that most people only do a small handful of things inside the control panel anyway. Sign in, manage domains, manage email accounts, manage forwarders, manage FTP accounts, and manage SQL databases.
 
Control panels like Plesk, CyberPanel, and Virtualmin look promising for the future with their modern features and user-friendly interfaces. DirectAdmin may be outdated (in your opinion), but it still offers reliable performance.
 
Hanging out at CloudFest this week and heard Adam Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Enhance speak on his product. It's worth keeping an eye on!

I'm not sold on leaving cPanel yet, but it's good to have alternatives. We do have one DirectAdmin server running for internal systems, but I haven't figured it all out yet (on the server side of things).
 
OnTheCloud.co said:
Hanging out at CloudFest this week and heard Adam Smith, Co-Founder and CEO of Enhance speak on his product. It's worth keeping an eye on!

I'm not sold on leaving cPanel yet, but it's good to have alternatives. We do have one DirectAdmin server running for internal systems, but I haven't figured it all out yet (on the server side of things).
Click to expand...
Yeah myself, but I can tell you I've worked a bit on directadmin and while it's not Cpanel... yet, it's getting close enough which makes me question Cpanel pricing.

I don't really feel like Cpanel has the cards to be able to keep increasing prices without losing people.

I think they're betting that system admins would rather fork out than learn something new, maybe it works maybe it won't.

But when I look at host now compared to cpanel I'm seeing a lot more direct admin, virtualmin and other things like konsoleh. Whereas when I started it was 90% cpanel the odd plesk panel.
 
I have started my career using cP, but day by day their prices are going to space. For a small company, such prices are getting big headache. I am afraid that if they keep increasing their prices, I would use them in future.
 
We use CyberPanel for our control panels. Purely because it's free and lightweight.
We will eventually shift from CyberPanel to cPanel when we get enough customers, but we've had no issues with CyberPanel so far. I can 100% vouch for the panel.
 
OnTheCloud.co said:
It's worth keeping an eye on!
Click to expand...
No it's not

Enhance developers refuse to adapt long standing web practices (such as mail piping) , but are quick to force you to pay per website/user, which has been only recently adopted.

Enhance is so far behind on their 'todo' list, they can't even keep themselves up to date on what's happening here in the real world.

Sorry, not sorry, but Enhance is done for. It has no chance to succeed if they continue to refuse to adapt tech that's been around for decades
 
Personally, i do like HestiaCP

Its simple to use ,, also quite simple to understand how to fix things if it isn't working as expected... has Domain management / dns etc, and other useful things like IP management too
 
webmaster.services said:
Personally, i do like HestiaCP

Its simple to use ,, also quite simple to understand how to fix things if it isn't working as expected... has Domain management / dns etc, and other useful things like IP management too
Click to expand...
I've heard some great things about HestiaCP, but I still wouldn't use it due to the complicated interface.
cPanel does have that user-friendly interface that makes everything a lot easier for people to use.
However, on the other hand, if I was a start up and was looking for free control panels for maybe a year or two that would definitely be on the list!
We first went with CyberPanel but moved to cPanel a year later. Apart from the pricing, my opinion on them is honestly quite good.
 
Occasionally, I utilize CWP (Control Web Panel) because I find it flexible to work with when my clients are having website and emails as their focus. I had some few issues with it after updates, but fixed by running afew commands.
 
Is anyone here familiar with AdminBolt? I got to speak with the founder of it recently, but I hadn't heard of it prior to that. It's suppose to be a parallel to cPanel / run on the same infrastructure from my understanding!
 
cPanel system has a familiar interface and feature it make it easy for customers to manage. Had some experience with the alternative, with DirectAdmin or Plesk, but it led to slow adoption for daily tasks. But again, switch to cPanel VPS, where handling the client is smoother with DomainRacer, and the pricing is competitive with WHM access.
 
zalvis said:
As we all know, after acquisition of cPanel, the board of directors are constantly pushing to prices on every year, and it seems they have stopped their innovation towards new technologies.

Is this time to migrate to another control panel? But most important part, will customers who are already got used to with cPanel, accept the migration? Because, at the end the customers will use it for their daily needs.

In the 2024, which are the control panels looks promising to you and why? I used DA for some projects, but found its UI outdated, so share your opinion.
Click to expand...
Enhance control is a very intuitive tool and it wouldn't surprise me if it takes over from cPanel or Plesk in the coming years.
 
The amount of tail end kissers for a pathetically weak and insecure panel (enhance) is just mindblowing. Quite seriously

No, enhance isn't going anywhere. At all.
  • It's LOSING traction because they can't keep on track with features
  • It's TOSSING customer features like proper cron editing
  • It literally blocks other software from running because it insists on showing a 'banner' on login
  • The containerization is a disaster
  • Forcing people to stick to default ssh ports is just asking for problems
  • Their php implementation is trash. No global php.ini, so you have to build it yourself if you want to actually use CLI
  • Their support team is worthless. They are typical outsourced garbage that just keep repeating the same lie over and over to you.
I've been with them since August. Given them a chance to grow and improve, but it's the same disastrous "support agent" replying over and over again with their garbage. No thanks. I pulled the trigger yesterday and started the outbound migration process. It's even more of a disaster due to their lack of proper backups, but whatever, I'll deal with it
 
whmcsguru said:
The amount of tail end kissers for a pathetically weak and insecure panel (enhance) is just mindblowing. Quite seriously

No, enhance isn't going anywhere. At all.
  • It's LOSING traction because they can't keep on track with features
  • It's TOSSING customer features like proper cron editing
  • It literally blocks other software from running because it insists on showing a 'banner' on login
  • The containerization is a disaster
  • Forcing people to stick to default ssh ports is just asking for problems
  • Their php implementation is trash. No global php.ini, so you have to build it yourself if you want to actually use CLI
  • Their support team is worthless. They are typical outsourced garbage that just keep repeating the same lie over and over to you.
I've been with them since August. Given them a chance to grow and improve, but it's the same disastrous "support agent" replying over and over again with their garbage. No thanks. I pulled the trigger yesterday and started the outbound migration process. It's even more of a disaster due to their lack of proper backups, but whatever, I'll deal with it
Click to expand...
That is certainly worrying! Even though we've had a positive experience with them thus far, however, we have been with them since the early launch of their product and respond within minutes to our matters. I'm sorry to hear that this has not been the same for you - luckily we do have hybrid of control panels (certainly reassuring) as we were thinking of going completely to them.
 
There are several good cPanel alternatives out there, but the “right” one really depends on what you’re running and how much control you need. With the amount of cPanel vulnerabilities popping up lately, a lot of people are starting to look at other panels that are lighter, more secure, and not tied to cPanel’s pricing model.

A few solid options worth considering:

  • DirectAdmin – Lightweight, stable, actively maintained, and doesn’t eat resources like cPanel. Good for shared hosting or small reseller setups.
  • Plesk – More polished UI, great for Windows + Linux environments, but still commercial.
  • CyberPanel – OpenLiteSpeed‑based, fast, modern UI, decent for WordPress‑heavy workloads.
  • HestiaCP / VestaCP forks – Simple, clean, open‑source, good for small deployments.
  • ISPConfig – Very flexible, but more technical and better suited for admins who want fine‑grained control.
At the end of the day, the panel is just a tool. What matters more is:
  • A reputable provider
  • Modern hardware (not old E5‑2670s from 2012)
  • Fast NVMe storage
  • A clean, stable network
  • Regular security updates
  • A panel that fits your workflow
If you’re running production workloads, choose something actively maintained with a good security track record. If you just need a simple panel for personal projects, one of the open‑source options will do the job without the overhead or licensing headaches.
 
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