ISPConfig

What do you like best?

ISPconfig is an easy to use, pretty straightforward webhosting control panel. Once installed it sees you as a reseller and you can add customers and websites including email hosting for those customers. It even has a hookup with letsencrypt so you can add free ssl certificates to the hosted sites.

Updating ISPConfig is a jiffy, it works with a shell command and runs smooth in 99.9% of the cases.

What do you dislike?

There is however a downside. I have encountered an issue that the built in letsencrypt option doesnt always want to work out of the box. You can however, if you have some linux knowledge install certbot on the server and use that to request certificates and automate the cert renewal. Somtimes updating causes a hassle but as said, with some knowledge you can workaround the issues. On that point DirectAdmin gives less trouble.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

Give it a change. If you are considering multiple servers, you can apply for a support pack that allows easy migration of sites and mail from one to another server. This is ideal if you are to setup a new server which you have ofcourse thoroughly tested and you wnat to put sites live on it. This way you dont have to setup all the sites by hand on the new machine.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The benefit with ISPconfig is that hosting sites goes easy. No need for extended knowledge of vi-ing an apache2 config file is needed, anyone with a tad bit of knowledge can go ahead. And keep a server operational.