I have been looking into CyberPanel, http://froxlor.org and ISPconfig for last 2 days.
I eliminated Cyberpanel because it doesn’t use ngninx or Apache and most of the people except either one of these.
Built-in file manager is always an issue, but it can be eliminated with net2ftp or something similar. And there are a couple of options for webmail like Rainloop etc.
At this point I believe none does replace cPanel at all. It just had so many little extras and add-ons that it will take some time until another panel even comes close. There ARE however many panels that fulfill any basic web hosting needs. Maybe this is a chance to show cPanel clients that they don’t really NEED all of cpanel features for theit websites to operate normally.
My favourites in order:
ISPConfig
Keyhelp
HestiaCP
DA (barely played around with DA, doesn’t mean it’s bad).
I am from India, would their billing module support gateways from here? I want a open source billing that offers something like Blesta’s offline payment gateway option. I do not want any official gateway.
I want to instruct people on how to pay or donate to get account.
Our idea includes a lot of free services including MX, web hosting for non-whois protected domains and free gitea for devs, bitwarden access and much more.
We want libre hosting solution for people who need.
If you can help, I don’t have much, but I can pay for a couple of hours of your work.
Don’t get me wrong, but I’d be extremely cautious when you proceed and start your company. You seem to ask a lot of questions, which is perfectly fine, but at the same time it does raise concerns on your ability to run a company. Please don’t take that as a personal insult but rather a fair warning. You’re going to put money in your company that you will lose if it doesn’t work out.
If you choose to offer free services then that will get you a lot of abuse that you’ll have to mitigate. If you can’t setup your own systems I’m assuming you won’t have the knowledge to automate mitigations for abusers. That’s not an issue if you have sufficient funds to hire someone to do that for you, but it appears you don’t have that either.
Our main motto is free web and MX hosting for custom domain only, that too only for domains with no whois protection. We would only provide accounts to people we know for starters and then go ahead with more. Account to whois protected domains would be donation based to sustain this idea.
Gitea is git hosting which would only be provided for gratis to devs who are interested in libre git hosting. A very limited set of people who live by principles.
I don’t think these services are prone to abuse directly at all.
I am from India, would their billing module support gateways from here?
I want to instruct people on how to pay or donate to get account.
Little confused, do you want to use a payment gateway or not? I haven’t checked their dev docs yet but if not much time taking, I can provide freelancing service
Yes, there always is. I’m not even talking about your whitelisted users being abusive (under the assumption you have full trust in your customers) but passwords leak everyday. You only need one compromised account on an unsecured system to blow them all.
Why do you think I would leave it out in open? I am cTO(cheap technical option), but I have real CTO level people who would check it from time to time.
But I really appreciate your healthy concern for my service. Much appreciated. You are gem of a person.
@jetchirag Since you asked, do you know any libre billing system that I could use? I want to go free/libre with this hosting service. Also, are you the one who contributed to Cyberpanel?
The scent of a failure comes from a fact that people generally begin a business in a subject they are well versed in. They have either a degree in that or have plenty of first hand experience before going into it.