Is there space for a new control panel?

Artashes

Artashes

Administrator
Staff member
cPanel's recent abuse of trust made me wonder if there is space for a new control panel and what it would need to be in order to gain market share.

Given the quick evolution of hosting toward cloud technology, do you think server management software will stick to traditional panels or will be integrated in a different way?

Is there a market report/white paper that you might have come across lately that give an insight into the state of control panels?

Obviously building a new panel isn't a quick affair, so I am looking at it from a long-term perspective, beyond the short-term pain cPanel has created on the market.

What are your thoughts on the opportunity?
 
Definitely room for another. Not sure if you want to pull/copy any of what I had written, but feel free to use your judgement on that.

I haven't seen much with regards to a market report on the state of control panels or server administration tools. I'll see what I can find in my poking around :)
 
bigredseo said:
Definitely room for another. Not sure if you want to pull/copy any of what I had written, but feel free to use your judgement on that.
Click to expand...

I wasn't sure if I could, but since the message you sent was exceptionally composed, and I have your blessing, I am posting it below in full:

source: bigredseo

I think on an overall level, cPanel just shot themselves in the foot and their trust that people had has been shattered.

DirectAdmin and a handful of others are going to do very well in the next few months, but I don't think they can sustain it. They've been on the market for a long time, but haven't swayed the cPanel base. Some say it's unstable, others say it's not friendly, I personally haven't used it aside from some testing 7 years ago.

Much of cPanel is made up of freely available softwares (mail, phpmyadmin, plugins etc), so then we're really taking about UX.

I don't know if something can be ramped up quick enough to capitalize on the cPanel departure, but as a whole, there's room in the market.

Price is not nearly as important as security and stability, although it seems DirectAdmin pricing is much different than I remember.

Current is $29/mo for unlimited accounts or $10/mo on cloudlinix. They announced they killed their lifetime license (unlimited updates) on July 1st due to the cPanel changes, but they do offer a lifetime license for $200 for 1 year support, then $99/year for updates etc. Not sure how that will go.

There were other control panels on the market such as hypervisor etc, but they were mainly VPS systems.

I honestly think that this cPanel change is going to force hosts to go back to their old style in-house solutions (GoDaddy was famous for theirs). I think EIG stands a chance to build their own, put it on Al their hosts and no longer pay cPanel.

CPanel has a stake in WHMCS which would have had the best chance against cPanel. Not sure if they bout it out completely (merge etc).

So, for users to switch it requires the main thing of being able to make a backup on cPanel and restore to the new system without any interference. This would be the #1 priority.

Speed, sure, and security (a must), but nobody needs 40+ icons in their control panel.

Reseller ability (multiple accounts) and then some form of server update system. CPanel and WHM have become bloated over the years.

It would be an interesting venture for sure. But a lot of moving parts.
 
Direct Admin seems to be the most sought alternative after cPanel.

There are other options too like
- CyberPanel
- VestaCP(security concerns though)
- ISPConfig
- hestiacp(variant of VestaCP)
- Centos webpanel
 
VestaCP and Centos webpanel is being considered by some hosts I know. It's a terrible job for users to move everything on a new server with new panel. VestaCP looks good, I wonder if it is compatible with CloudLinux and Litespeed?
 
yes any new panel with same features would definatly take over the market , cpanel is actually abusing its Brand name and market position.
 
Hey,
You guys forgot about Interworx, this is what we will be using on all vps machines from now on because of what's going on with cpanel and raising there prices.

cPanel did what they did because they could and did not care about the small guys. All they care about is making that green.... lol
 
Ditto

easyhostmedia said:
centos-webpanel has a good change to flourish

same features as Cpanel

http://centos-webpanel.com/features

its is free with a Pro version at $1.49 monthly or $11.99 per year.
Click to expand...

This is exactly what I was thinking! I love centos-webpanel. It just works, but it seems a little bloated, especially the paid pro version.

Another great one is DirectAdmin. Out of the box, it may not look like much but I have seen customizations that blew me out of the water and made me wonder why I am paying for Plesk.

Yea, I recently stopped using cPanel because of the greedy fees.

I do not think there is room for another c panel. You would need a huge team to get started and to maintain it. I would say you need a quarter million to get off the ground.

Competition is fierce, although most of the control panels are useless. It would be tough to get this project off the ground. I get Plesk for $10.18 a month. I am fairly happy with it.
 
Other panel require much development and better pricing. Though DA has good pricing but much more development and marketing requried.
 
Artashes said:
cPanel's recent abuse of trust made me wonder if there is space for a new control panel and what it would need to be in order to gain market share.

Given the quick evolution of hosting toward cloud technology, do you think server management software will stick to traditional panels or will be integrated in a different way?

Is there a market report/white paper that you might have come across lately that give an insight into the state of control panels?

Obviously building a new panel isn't a quick affair, so I am looking at it from a long-term perspective, beyond the short-term pain cPanel has created on the market.

What are your thoughts on the opportunity?
Click to expand...

Im not sure but im seeing alot of guys moving not to plesk... but here in South africa the major hosting companies are all shifting to xeenlo and konsoleh, not sure if you've heard of it, its ok but i haven't had enough time on it to truly say if it can compare to cpanel however it seems our bigger hosting companies seem to think so.
 
PeterShene said:
Im not sure but im seeing alot of guys moving not to plesk... but here in South africa the major hosting companies are all shifting to xeenlo and konsoleh, not sure if you've heard of it, its ok but i haven't had enough time on it to truly say if it can compare to cpanel however it seems our bigger hosting companies seem to think so.
Click to expand...

xneelo is just a hosting provider

xneelo Ltd [formerly Hetzner Ltd] is a web hosting company based in South Africa. It was sometimes called Hetzner South Africa to distinguish it from the German partner company Hetzner Online GmbH. The company announced a rebrand to xneelo in July 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xneelo
Click to expand...

konsoleh is their own control panel which is only available to xneelo customers
 
cPanel price increase, leads to the presumption that the company considered there are no good alternatives on the market.

But last few couple of months we have seen many big hosting players has announced moving away from cPanel to another alternative. Some companies has implemented their in-house control panel.

Although there are alternatives on the market, free and paid ones still market is open for new control panels which can offer user-friendly interface with high security and regular updates.
 
Phil_techie said:
cPanel price increase, leads to the presumption that the company considered there are no good alternatives on the market.
Click to expand...

I dont think it is that. I think because the same company that own Plesk who bought out cPanel, just moving cPanel into the same price structure they run plesk on
 
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