Sorry for being late to the

JeevesBond — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:18:30 +0000

Sorry for being late to the party! I'm with you, Greg, on DIY being more easier/more fun.

We ran this site on Plesk a while ago and I don't think you could pay me to use that thing again, it's just my opinion, but I didn't like it at all (for pretty-much the reasons you mention).

For your clients, CPanel is probably the way to go, it seems nigh-ubiquitous on clients' servers. I haven't seen a server running Plesk for some time.

I have been using cPanel

pinkypainter — Mon, 16 May 2011 08:04:39 +0000

I have been using cPanel since 3 years ago and till today, still with it. The UI is more user-friendly and easier for non-IT background people to maintain the website.

cPanel with Softaculous is even more convenient. I could install whatever application needed from it. Moreover, majority of the famous applications are available in Softaculous.

I have cPanel installed on my

pr0gr4mm3r — Sun, 08 May 2011 19:25:33 +0000

I have cPanel installed on my production. It makes it easy for me to maintain as well as for my customers. It costs money...but you get what you pay for.

For my home and testing servers, I use webmin. It's free and handles the tedious tasks like iptables.

I agree on the "Damn ugly"

Greg K — Sat, 07 May 2011 21:36:08 +0000

I agree on the "Damn ugly" statement, but didn't want people thinking that was part of my decision for choosing.

The directory structure, IMO, for when a user FTP's in was messy as crap when I set it up for SFTP (listed lib and lib64 directories.... I like keeping it simple).

I did use Webmin/VirualMin before when I first set up a web server. Almost went that route before I found where to pay for cpanel by the month.

Oh, another thing that bothered me was that at least for 1&1's dedicated servers, the Plesk install gives you PHP 5.1. their instructions for upgrading PHP (using Atomic repo) takes you straight to 5.3, which they flat out tell you "has been reported to break parts of plesk". Nice huh!

(cPanel installed with 5.2, which is good for me).

Cpanel is by far the most

m4rc3 — Sat, 07 May 2011 20:24:05 +0000

Cpanel is by far the most used control panel these days and is what most of your clients will expect so it's a smart move to go with it.
There are a few more out there, like plesk, DirectAdmin, webmin & usermin, etc. but non can compare with cpanel.
With plesk you get slow and virtually non-existent support besides the fact that it's damn ugly ( both interface and functionality ).
Personally I love DirectAdmin because it's small, fast and reliable but it lacks a lot of functionalities that cpanel provides and are a must for some.
Cpanel will make life easier on you, less time spent working on the server and more time getting clients.

I could write for hours regarding plesk vs cpanel but in the end, plesk is a pain in the ass to work with and cpanel makes your life easier for a few bucks a month.