Control Panels for Web Hosting

By Matt Hedges

The environment of web hosting is extremely competitive at the moment and these conditions have created an environment where firms are aggressively competing on price to offer numerous hosting plans at an attractive cost. If firms can't compete on price they are forced to stand out in other ways. There are a number of different ways a firm can make a strong offering to consumers and these include building the site, providing a domain name at no extra charge and the overall fee. However, the major element for many consumers is the Control Panel. Therefore, the website that you have and what you want for it will play a huge role in determining which web host is best for you. The way that a web host maintains control to organize a customers site is through the software they provide and this comes in the shape of the Control Panel. Every single action and activity that is undertaken on a website is maintained through the Control Panel. These actions can include anything ranging from creating FTP accounts, operating the email server for the client or compiling statistical data. No matter what operating platform you use, be it Windows or Linux there will be a Control Panel for your specific platform or one that can cater for both.

The Windows Platform and the Control Panels for it.

The Windows Platform has a number of dedicated web hosting Control Panels that only work for them. Two examples of these include Helm and Hosting Accelerator. If an easy to use and customer friendly interface is required, Helm is generally held in the highest regard. A major reason that Helm stands apart from its competitors is due to the way it operates its billing information. More often than not, Control Panels do not contain information about the billing process so this is one area where Helm can be differentiated from other firms although H-Sphere also offers this advantage. In addition to this benefit, Helm is easy to operate and many users are able to interface with the system very comfortably.

Features and advantages of Helm:

* Managing your server: Helm can interact in many ways with your server and can operate with unlimited servers and domains. It is also possible for users to add or remove servers with the minimum of fuss. There are many servers that Helm has compatibility with and these include, MailEnable, SmarterMail, Merak and Imail. In addition to these servers, Helm also works with MDaemon, Mail Servers and hMailServer in addition to Serv-U FTP, Microsoft FTP, Gene6 FTP Server, MySQL Server, and Microsoft SQL Server etc. Helm is also capable of supporting ColdFusion, ASP, ASP,NET, PHP and Perl.

* Billing: They allow the hosting company to use either Helm's own internal billing system or utilize any other 3rd party billing solution. It also enables to create the bill in any currency and provides the option of sending and viewing the invoices either in HTML format or in plain text format.

* Customer Management: This web hosting control panel also creates hosting plans for resellers as well as specifies the various resource limits including the amount of data transfer, domains, email accounts and disk-space.

What control panels are suitable for Linux Platform:

There are some web hosting control panels that only operate on the Linux platform and these would include DirectAdmin, cPanel and Interworks. Many people like the services offered by DirectAdmin as they are availale for a low cost and is an extremely easy and convenient control panel to use. Similarly, many people choose Interworx as they find it a simple interface and it too offers a variety of additional features. However, these control panels cannot match the popularity of the cPanel service, which is by far the most coveted Linux based control panel. The cPanel service serves in excess of ten styles of Linux. One of the reasons why many of the companies who provide a web hosting facility like cPanel is due to the low cost of its hosting. There are also other benefits of this brand of software package which provides a great number of other services. These services include deploy applications, provide the ability for customer accounts, offer an account transferring service between servers, provides a secure server and many other key features.

Benefits of using Helm:

* Statistics of how the website is performing: With the amount of statistical tools and facilities offered by cPanel it is possible for any website owner to correctly analyze and calculate the traffic that is on their site. Not every hosting provider offers this service as many view it as a drain in their resources and would prefer not to offer the service to customers. If this an important aspect for a website owner, it is in their interest to ensure their choice of web host actually offers the service.

* Email Management: This particular web hosting control panel provides an email management facility that allows the website owner to create as well as delete email accounts. They provide Webmail facility that enables their clients to read mail online. The cPanel further offers other email related facilities such as setting up forwarders in order to forward one email account to another, setting up simple auto-responders in order to send a computerized reply back to the sender in case there is an enquiry email.

* File Manager and FTP: FTP access is required to upload files and cPanel is capable of offering this facility and this is one of the most important features a website should be offering to its clients. Another thing that cPanel allows is for new FTP accounts to be registered so other people can have access the website. The power to restrict and specify access rights regarding certain files or folders will always remain with the website owner and the hosting company. Not everyone is happy with using an FTP package to load their files to a website and they can use the cPanel File Manager instead. This will grant the user to ability to unzip files, place files upon their server and be able to duplicate or erase any files.

What control panels are suitable for the Linux and Windows Platform

There are certain web hosting control panels, which work for both Linux and Window based websites. The Ensim, H-Sphere and Plesk are the most common examples of such control panels. The H-Sphere offers several features that range from key functionalities to complete automation. However, it is the Plesk which is the most popular control panel for Linux and Windows platforms. Most of the web hosting companies that serve both Linux and Windows hosting customers opt for Plesk. Its interface looks quite like the Windows XP and is an expensive option as it serves both the platforms.

Key benefits of using Plesk:

* Shared Hosting: The Plesk offer a self administrating and identical multi-platform design that enables to perfectly manage the shared hosting environment. Even the non technical people can conveniently setup, create, and manage accounts.

* Dedicated Hosting: The RPM installation and modular design of the Plesk control panel enables the Dedicated Hosting providers to satisfy the various requirements of tech savvy clients. It offers a number of unique tools such as XML-API and other 3rd party applications.

About the Author:

This article is published with permission from http://www.webhostingmadness.com, a provider of hosting company ratings, articles and helpful guides on the web hosting industry.