When it comes to web hosting control panels cPanel is clearly one of the leaders out there, however it does have some short comings. Two of the major drawbacks are that it’s a closed product therefore developing add-ons isn’t possible and the other being that you have to pay to use it. If you are a smaller company that can’t afford to spend the extra cash to get this there are other solutions out there, best of all they are free, so let’s take a look at a few of them.nWeb-cpnWeb-cp is an open source solution that is based on the Web://cp it picks up right where that project left off and continues on. It supports major functionality that is demanded in today’s industry such as domain, server, reseller, and email management with a four layer module system. Best of all Web-cp is written in PHP so it’s pretty light weight and shouldn’t put much additional stress on your server, making it great for a server that may be a little low on power but still needs to run additional add-on components.nVHCSnVHCS is a freely available open source option comparable to cPanel, with an impressive feature list. The list consists of support for domain and server management as well as extensive reseller capabilities, it’s also compatible with a good selection of Linux distributions. It’s unique in the fact that it’s written in and compiled with a collection of interpreted languages, which helps to give it a little edge. It’s user interface is written in PHP, the back-end is written in C, and the engine is written in Perl, this enables very streamlined system management. All of this combines to make VHCS a very worthy free alternative to the almighty cPanel.nWebminnWebmin is a free control panel that is also distributed under an open-source license agreement. It’s built using Perl and includes Spam Assassin along with many other applications that you should expect from a good control panel competitor. Webmin includes additional goodies as well, which are Usermin and Virtualmin. The Usermin version is stripped down and allows users to manage their web mail, the Virtualmin verison (which also has a paid option) includes features that will support a control panel for resellers. Webmin also includes some more robust features such as cluster sever management which makes it one of the more popular alternatives to cPanel.nConclusionnIf you are in the market for a control panel it’s important to keep in mind that price shouldn’t be the sole factor for your decision. As you should also consider how well supported the development is, and also if it fits your needs. While cPanel isn’t free you should keep in mind that it is the number one control panel for a reason. Also if you would like more information on servers, control panels, or anything else web hosting related come visit us over at BestWebHostingReview.org.
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