What control panel should we offer?

AaronSS · April 2021

We will be launching our first shared hosting offer soon!

Looking for feedback on what control panel people are most interesting it

AaronSS · April 2021

Fixed Poll

Falzo · April 2021

cpanel unlimited unlimited A++ something ...

I'll show myself out.

AaronSS · April 2021

Poll fixed again, sorry it's my first poll

seenu · April 2021

people are more comfortable with cpanel than anything else but with their pricing structure...i don't think many people can offer it especially with unlimited sites etc so DA is the option

and with a good theme, you can make DA almost like cpanel so onboarding is easy.

for end users, apiscp has steep learning curve and not many are interested in learning (because they want a quick solution to host and forget)

Abdullah · April 2021

congrats!

I'd prefer DirectAdmin if you're targeting normal LE users.
Also, Apiscp sounds like a unique offering.

mikho · April 2021

I would rather ask you, what control panel do YOU know best?

That is the CP to chose.
If you can’t manage it, the customers will find out and leave.
Often because bad performance or clueless response in tickets.

Pasweb · April 2021

this is my opinion from the client side, regardless of the control panel,
I will see the completeness of the core shared hosting specifications such as Cloudlinux, Softaculous, Immunify360, MailChannels.
and the consequences are large monthly bills for new provider.

AaronSS · April 2021

@Pasweb said:
I will see the completeness of the core shared hosting specifications such as Cloudlinux, Softaculous, Immunify360, MailChannels.

This is one of the reasons I really like ApisCP - you don't need any of that and @nem is super helpful

ehab · April 2021

ApisCP looks good and was easy to adapt to.

Ympker · April 2021

@StuderSolutions said:

@Pasweb said:
I will see the completeness of the core shared hosting specifications such as Cloudlinux, Softaculous, Immunify360, MailChannels.

This is one of the reasons I really like ApisCP - you don't need any of that and @nem is super helpful

Tbh, Softaculous is probably something I wouldn't want to miss these days. Got used to it, can easily create staging sites or push to live, backup and create sets of plugins that are automatically installed upon WordPress installation. That's just me, though

Aside from that ApisCP is great and @nem is doing an amazing job Already seen it in action at @SGraf MyRoot.pw .

debaser · April 2021

Can’t answer the question when I don’t know
1. If you have experience with either of them
2. What your target audience will be.

ehab · April 2021

@StuderSolutions make ApisCP offers soon. If you need more testing/help please ask.

caracal · April 2021

ApisCP could be a good differentiator

Lee · April 2021

People will gravitate to what they know, cPanel/DA. ApisCP may be an interesting alternative to you but you need to ask yourself what your audience wants. Don't be quirky just because, it won't get you that far.

If your target audience is LE* then you may get a few 'supporter' purchases, wider market with ApisCP, no chance I suspect.

_MS_ · April 2021

DirectAdmin is the way to go.
Alongside DA, you could also offer slightly cheaper ApisCP plans or same priced but with slightly higher resource limits.

seriesn · April 2021

@Lee said:
People will gravitate to what they know, cPanel/DA. ApisCP may be an interesting alternative to you but you need to ask yourself what your audience wants. Don't be quirky just because, it won't get you that far.

If your target audience is LE* then you may get a few 'supporter' purchases, wider market with ApisCP, no chance I suspect.

This right here.

APISCP is great product. Probably one of the most unique and awesome hosting control panel out there.

However, the problem is, most of your average Tom, Dick and Harry aren't tech junkies. Some don't even know the difference between a server and a webserver. They want a solution that is,
A) Proven
Easy to use
C) Can be googled

Just by not selling cPanel based hosting, you are going to miss out on a decent % of potential clients. The remaining might want to go with DA because, there's a decent chatter about them online.

It also depends on your target demo. Are you going to market towards hardcore techies? Or people who feels awesome knowing their host doesn't use Whmcs/cPanel/DA/Solusvm etc and gets the kick out of it?

Or are you going to target your everyday consumers? If it is the Later, cPanel still rules the market, followed by DirectAdmin.

MichaelCee · April 2021

Waiting for StuderPanel!

Mr_Tom · April 2021

@seriesn said: Or are you going to target your everyday consumers? If it is the Later, cPanel still rules the market, followed by DirectAdmin.

While I agree with that, when I first started with web hosting a lot of the hosts I tried were using custom panels - these may have been frontends that used cpanel backend or simply themes, but it wasn't until after I started playing with VMs that I came across cPanel itself.
A few of the clients we have have come from hosts with "custom" panels - so I think as long as it's easy to use it doesn't matter if it's a name people know as a lot of people haven't even heard of cpanel.

MichaelCee · April 2021

@Mr_Tom said:

@seriesn said: Or are you going to target your everyday consumers? If it is the Later, cPanel still rules the market, followed by DirectAdmin.

While I agree with that, when I first started with web hosting a lot of the hosts I tried were using custom panels - these may have been frontends that used cpanel backend or simply themes, but it wasn't until after I started playing with VMs that I came across cPanel itself.
A few of the clients we have have come from hosts with "custom" panels - so I think as long as it's easy to use it doesn't matter if it's a name people know as a lot of people haven't even heard of cpanel.

Very true. I used cPanel for maybe two or three years before I even knew I was using cPanel.

But I was also 12 so there is that.

Mr_Tom · April 2021

My first "panel" I used was with servage.net - which was straight forward enough to use but I believe it isn't based on cpanel.

Most non-techy people I know who would want to try hosting their own site just want an easy way to do it, they've no "name" in their heads that the panel must be.

seriesn · April 2021

@Mr_Tom said:

@seriesn said: Or are you going to target your everyday consumers? If it is the Later, cPanel still rules the market, followed by DirectAdmin.

While I agree with that, when I first started with web hosting a lot of the hosts I tried were using custom panels - these may have been frontends that used cpanel backend or simply themes, but it wasn't until after I started playing with VMs that I came across cPanel itself.
A few of the clients we have have come from hosts with "custom" panels - so I think as long as it's easy to use it doesn't matter if it's a name people know as a lot of people haven't even heard of cpanel.

Agreed. It is the name "cPanel" that is almost associated with "control panel". Name means a lot.

Lee · April 2021

People have less tolerance for new things in the hosting industry these days. Especially when it comes to control panels and having to learn a new one. Sure, techies may but what does an end-user really want generally speaking? Familiarity. Not something new.

Falzo · April 2021

@Lee said: People have less tolerance for new things in the hosting industry these days. Especially when it comes to control panels and having to learn a new one.

very true! I myself hate change to UX/UIs a lot.

but I think this is not really addressing the question here because this only applies to very specific group of people (those who are already clients somewhere, used to a certain panel and with some experience in hosting...)

@Mr_Tom said: so I think as long as it's easy to use it doesn't matter if it's a name people know as a lot of people haven't even heard of cpanel

This I think brings it more into the right direction...

The poll is simply flawed in the way that it is asking the rather wrong people.
I'd also say there are two possible approaches here (which already have been mentioned) but can't be addressed with this poll anyway.

1) directly go with something you are comfortable with and knowledgable about. if you can handle tasks and support for it easily and have confidence in it, you will find the right audience that does not prioritize on the panel brand at all or can and will adopt
focus on your unique selling point instead and grow your business without trying to make yet another boring cpanel reseller master best in the world shared host.

being a good provider is much more then offering/using the most common panels. (I am close to vomitting every other day, when I have to log into one of these ugly, unintuitive WHMCS client areas... just saying)

2) define your target audience first and find out what they want/need/prioritize.

as said before there of course will be a group that already has experience with webhosting and might know a few panels/providers. in this group there will be some, that prefer to stick with what they are used to.
so if you really want to target these people first (or only), then obviously you'd need multiple panels and have one for each flavour.
or you narrow down your target audience even more to only one panel and the target group for those who know that one and want it and hope for some bycatch later?

maybe you rather think out of the box and see that there are other possible (huge) user groups out there and a lot of them have not even had any webhosting before or do not prioritize on just the panel brand.
every day someone wakes up and decides they need a website. would one really think they all start looking at the panels first and base their decision on the brand of that? I don't think so...
rather focus on what these people need or are looking for and how you as provider can help them best and most likely you'll find that it does not matter so much anymore, which panel you use after all (but you still could try to optimise on that aspect later by asking them)

TL;DR; I can only recommend to either decide on your expertise and what you can really provide best or try to think inbound and define your future clients and what those want or need.
While the people around here have a lot of experience and maybe even heard feedback from their client base it will all be subjective to their target groups and USPs ans whatnot.

This includes me: I never really used cpanel but had confixx, plesk, keyhelp and a lot of others, even customized/whitelabelled.
my target audience never really cared for the panel, as long as they could change some settings on their own or easily had me do it for them. but again, that doesn't say anything about your potential clients ;-)

havoc · April 2021

Don't care just for the love of all that is holy make the passwords consistent / sync'd. Don't want one for the home page, one for the management panel, one for the VNC and one for the SSH. Each with their own username confusing the hell out of password managers

One for website, one for SSH. No more.

Mr_Tom · April 2021

@Falzo said: maybe you rather think out of the box and see that there are other possible (huge) user groups out there and a lot of them have not even had any webhosting before or do not prioritize on just the panel brand.

This was my point. Most people I know who want to give hosting their own site a go have never heard of a cpanel/directadmin/etc. They just want to click some self explanatory buttons and their site works.

I'm more experienced with DirectAdmin so I lean towards that - but if it's a system we're managing ourselves instead of the client we don't even use that (we tend to use https://sympl.host unless it requires a custom stack) because from an end user point they don't care.

So, as a few others have mentioned - work out your audience. If it's first time hosters, don't ask techie people what they'd pick - go with a simple solution that you can theme/customise to make idiot proof.

And as @havoc says, reduce the number of logins. One of the reasons I don't push our DA hosting is that it requires a second login - at least VM management can be done within Blesta at the minute for us.