Hosting Control Panels

Plesk, Ensim, Cpanel, HSphere, or Webmin? Which to choose? Well…it depends!

Do you like your hosting control panel flavor to be pretty or functional? Do you do shared hosting, virtual private servers, or dedicated hosting?

These days it seems that the most popular for shared hosting is Cpanel.  Hosting companies like BlueHost and HostMonster use this as their control panel. It’s pretty, it’s easy, and it has tons of features for beginners.  Plus it’s not too hard to do server admin when running a shared hosting company.  So everyone wins. Make sure you get it with Fantastico Enabled!

Plesk is being used less and less for major hosting companies, but we have used it many times on a dedicated server and it’s pretty easy to manage IP pools, setup accounts/domains, and manage your services.  At this time I’m not aware of any major hosting company that uses this panel for shared hosting – only dedicated web hosting.

Ensim is a very easy to use and manage web control software. It’s just not as pretty as the others, but they do have some need plugins for things like a gallery, bulletin board, and blogs.  OLM Web Hosting used to use this and I think they still might.  We had an account on a virtual private server with them then we upgraded to a dedicated server through OLM and it worked great. The only problem was the services kept shutting down when we got a lot of spam. So the mail server setup on Ensim was wonky!

Hsphere and Webmin are usually used for dedicated servers.  They are not as easy as some of these other panels.  It’s best to use these if you know SSH commands and can work through the server that way.  Webmin is easy once you get used to it, but make sure you’re with a company that can support you during the learning curve like Rackspace.

Some companies have created their own panel – these include companies like StartLogic and Ipower who both use vDeck – very similar to Cpanel.  DreamHost uses their own as well and so does 1 & 1 Web Hosting.  Godaddy Web Hosting is probably the least user friendly of the control panels created by hosting companies.  These all have limited documentation because they are proprietary so you better make sure the company has great support!

Free Subdomain Hosting

There are a few different types of free web hosting, but on this post we focus on 2 types.

Free Domain Hosts and Free Subdomain Hosts.

Some companies like StormPages allow both – you can host a domain or you can use one of their subdomains.  This is the safest type of free hosting company. That way when you are ready for a domain you can add it easily.

Others do only one or the other.  What is the difference?

1. Free Domain Hosting – you own the domain and you point your nameservers to the host. Then you access it via the internet by typing in your domain name in the explorer address bar. Such as google.com.

2. Free Subdomain Hosting – you don’t own a domain and you don’t have to pay for a subdomain. A subdomain hosting name is pointed to a subfolder on the server below the main domain. Accessed as bob.20m.com or the like.  This is a more cost effective option, but you have less control. What if the host goes out of business? All the links you have built up don’t point to a working domain. Where if you were using a full domain hosting company – if they go out of business – your links don’t break because you can move the site to a new server.

Even companies that just offer the subdomain hosting can offer an add-free option so you can remove ads for a few bucks. I think stormpages is about $19 and 20m is something like $24.  Then it costs nothing to add a domain so you can have a full hosting plan for about $20. That’s compared to the normal $100/year that most people charge. Of course, you don’t get all the features this way, but it’s a great way to start a website for very little money and get away from the spam ads they love to put on your pages (which could potentially drive customers away from your site).

For things like a shopping cart or any ecommerce function you’ll probably need a full hosting plan at one of the providers like hostmonster, bluehost, or godaddy. We’ve listed them in our top cheap hosting links to the right.  Some of these will offer a free domain name with the purchase of a hosting plan. The only problem when shopping for a hosting plan like this is paying attention to price. Everyone advertises their 2 year pre-payment price so the total charge is something like $165 instead of the 6.95 they advertise. Godaddy offers a 2 month payment option so it’s low risk to start, but they don’t offer a free domain (this costs an extra $8).

If you are using subdomain hosting – you can always do a 301 redirect to your new site after you get enough traffic to justify the investment in a domain and full hosting plan. This will tell the search engines to point all links and give link credit to your new site so you get backlinks right from the start.  Of course, if the host deletes you pages or goes out of business you will lose that. Just make sure you choose a solid free domain hosting company. Beware of those based on panels like vistapanel, xpanel, or layeredpanel. These are just too easy to setup and those are beginner scripts so a host that uses them probably won’t be around long.

Hope this helps. Good luck in your free subdomain or domain hosting venture!

Hosting Reviews

We created this blog to post reviews of free web hosting companies.

People need to be very careful about free web space providers because not all are created equal - users must verify the stability of the host to ensure low downtime periods and higher quality features.

This blog is a clearinghouse of information on free hosting companies and maybe a few select cheap web hosting services to compare and contrast.  We are not here to sell you anything – we just want people to be aware of what’s out there.  If you are interested in having your host reviewed – contact us or leave a comment.

For those looking to give a rating or their own review of a free host – please leave the comments on the free hosting review page.

We might also review sites related to free hosting and other internet related topics on this site.