Evaluating open source web/email/dns hosting control panels

I’ve been researching open source control panels for years but have never found a product that I was completely satisfied with. I suspect this is an area where there are too many disparate products that many of them do many things well but not one does everything well enough. I decided to revisit the candidates and see if anything caught my eye to try.

Active Projects

• DTC - http://www.gplhost.com/software-dtc.html
• GNUPanel - http://www.gnupanel.org/
• ISPConfig - http://www.ispconfig.org/
• SysCP - https://www.syscp.org/
• vhffs - http://www.vhffs.org/

Inactive Projects

• EZadmin (May 2006)
• VHCS (Jan 2006)
• web-cp (Sep 2005)

Summary

Of all of these products the only one that is packaged and available in Ubuntu (since Gutsy) and Debian (only in Sid currently) is DTC. DTC also has the distinction of being the only application to support Xen hosting which I find valuable. So for the time being I’m going to give DTC a try, provide some feedback, and see if I can get it to meet some, if not all, of my needs.

Further research

• A lengthy list of Debian compatible hosting control panels
• A discussion on which control panels to use