CPanel/WHMCS - Open Source Alternatives

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Are there any OS alternatives or other matches that can handle billing and provisioning of domains sites?

Currently using the classic pair but looking at something for a new, smaller scale project.

 

[arnydnxluk]

Loads of options.

The most popular commercial control panels are:

Plesk (owned by Oakley Capital who also own cPanel and WHMCS)
DirectAdmin
InterWorx (now owned by LiquidWeb)

For billing, Blesta is a very good alternative.

What's the goal?

Why do you want to avoid WHMCS / cPanel?

Is open source a necessity?

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

Part just looking at options, part CPanel 200% price increase.

I've used Virtualmin with WHMCS before and that is fine and Blesta looks like a front runner.

I'll look at InterWorx. I remember ruling DirectAdmin out a few years ago, but will review again.

Thanks for the pointers.

 

[gpietersz]

I have not used Virtualmin, but its an extension of Webmin. One of my clients uses Webmin with multiple sites on a single VPS and I prefer it to what I remember of cPanel. They did have a problem with letsencrypt, other than that they are happy.

I do not use control panels much though (I mostly just use ssh) and have not used cPanel for a while so my comparison with cPanel might be out of date.

 

[GURUCLOUD]

Blesta / HostBill for WHMCS alternatives
DirectAdmin is really the only other CP i'd recommend - you need to be much more tech savvy to look after the server however (fine for end user however) - an awful lot more CLI work and back to compiling everything from source.

 

[HostXNow]

Yeah, @arnydnxluk and @GURUCLOUD covered that well.

I will say that it is reported that a lot of the other control panels have security flaws reported by security company so be careful with them.

ISPConfig and DirectAdmin seem to be safe but as mentioned they are nothing like cPanel. cPanel is much easier to manage and use for provider, techs and customers hence worth the cost.

 

[Paul Kelly ICHYB]

This is now even more relevant as Cpanel price has gone up 200%!

 

[stugster]

We looked at this and decided the 200% price hike, although unpalatable, was actually not enough justification to go through the hassle of moving it all. The features of cPanel/WHMCS are not to be found anywhere else without a significant learning curve and pain. The time invested to move and maintain a different platform was just way more than the cPanel price hike.