web hosting control panels
I’ve been shopping around for virtual web hosting control panels. At this point, I am interested only in providing end-users things like file management, basic database administration, pre-defined package mangement.
They seem to fall into three broad categories:
- expensive proprietary packages
- free open-source packages
- custom software developed by hosting companies
The leader in #1 seems to be cPanel. I am not at all impressed with their demo, it looks very cluttered to me and I really want something simple, easy and aesthetically pleasing.
I have checked out all of the free/open-source web hosting control panels that Wikipedia lists, and I am also very displeased with the UI, and the code doesn’t look very easy to jump into to me. There seems to be a lot of custom code (I’d be happiest with something based on Django, but the PHP ones could at least use Cake). This makes me a little worried on the security aspect (XSS, SQL injection, etc.). Most of these code bases seem to be very old and not necessarily very active.
So is #3 the way to go? I’ve seen and heard about lots of great hosting control panels that only exist behind close doors, is this the big differentiator for modern hosting companies?
