If you have a Virtual Private Server or VPS, there is nothing better than having a tool to manage them. There are many options available in the market which can help you manage your Virtual Private Server or dedicated server. It also feels great if there is no cost attached to using these tools. It is also a great way to interact and manage the web projects. The control panels give the owners an interactive way to manage and control their Virtual Private Server or VPS. It also renders the use of experts as they are themselves interactive and self-explanatory. Even if you do not have any experience in managing servers, these admin panels will help you to successfully manage more than one servers, through few clicks only.
There are certain features which are common to all the web control panels. The top 5 free web hosting control panels are Webmin, ISPConfig, Ajenti, Virtualmin, and ZPanel. Some of the common features are Database, DNS, FTP Management, email, and FTP administration. All these admin panels have certain features which differ for each one of them. We will look at some of the various features. As for the supported OS ISPConfig supports Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, Debian & OpenSuse. Similarly, Ajenti supports Debian, RHEL, Ubuntu, Gentoo, CentOS, other BDS and Linux distributions. In case of Zpanel, it supports Windows, Unix, Linux, and macOS. Webmin supports Unix and similar architecture. For Virtualmin, it is UNIX and Linux distributions.
Another feature is Front-end, backend, and Framework. In case of ISPConfig, it is PHP and for the back-end, it is MySQL and PHP. For Ajenti it is Javascript, Angular JS, CoffeeScript and ECMAScript 6. For Backend, it is Python and Gevent. ZPanel has PHP and Apache HTTP Server, MySQL & PHP. Virtualmin is based on PHP for both front-end and back-end, and for Webmin, it is Perl and Perl. All these options provide you various options such as FTP management, database management, IPv6 support and multiple servers management (not all have this option). Many times a question will arise do you need a Windows VPS? You can set up a windows VPS to often match very closely to your normal desktop. You can also specify which applications you need to install and you can also have the same windows desktop and even Microsoft office products can be installed on the server.
Let us look at the 5 web control Panels. We discussed a lot of the features that they have but now we will talk about the pros and cons.
- ISPConfig
This is a top multilingual panel with statistics. It has been developed by the ISPConfig UG and is one of the most widely used open source control panels. It is available under the BSD license. ISPConfig gives the option to implement a web-based interface to enable the typical panel tasks which are mainly for Linux users. As stated earlier this is the best option if you are looking for a multilingual panel and it can come in handy with multiple languages. It has an easy to operate and a user-friendly interface to manage multiple servers.
- Ajenti
It is again an open source web control panel which does its job efficiently. It is most preferred because of its faster remote access and higher performance. It has many pre-installed tools such as file manager, text editor, terminal access and code manager. These tools help improve the efficiency of web management and allows to easily manage and configure other servers.
- ZPanel
It is one of the easiest panels to use and is compatible with all the operating systems and makes it the best choice for windows and macOS X users. Apart from this, the panel runs on Apache, MySQL, and PHP which is quite impressive. This helps the admins to effectively use software packages like RoundCube, Apache web server, Webalizer, phpMyAdmin, IMAP, DoveCot, Postfix, FTP Jailing, PHPSysInfo. This is the best enterprise control panel.
- Virtualmin
This is another version of Webmin which is supercharged. It is open source and widely used across the globe. It is written in PHP and perfectly supports UNIX operating systems. This is the closest you can get with cPanel and Plesk
- Webmin
It is a web-based version of the Virtualmin panel and is also best known for its flexibility. It supports UNIX and similar systems and the newer versions even support Windows. It is known for its wealth of modules and a better interface for efficient management of other features.
We have seen 5 different control panels which have unique and common features. These panels are important for hosting the web control panels and also for the management of the website and web app. You have the option to choose the best panel which suits your need.
