Feature comparison: cPanel - Direct Admin - Plesk - Webmin
 

Plesk: UI is attractive
- Plesk: UI is easy to understand and navigate. The division of admin, reseller, and domain is separated into groups on the same screen so that you can see what you have control over and what those below you have control over. It's also easy to adjust the rights and features at lower levels.
- Plesk: From what I read here, you can install and updated versions of Apache, MySQL, etc. without breaking it.
- Plesk: A domain cannot practically have an ftp site.
a. There is only one FTP login available and you cannot control the location of the login.
b. Anonymous logins require unique IPs.
c. About the only thing you could do to have separate ftp login areas per user is to create sub domains. However, the only places that they can upload to is CGI-Bin and httpdocs. You cannot add upload or download directories unless it is beneath the unrenamble CGI-Bin and httpdocs.
d. You cannot control where users log in. The will land directly beneath CGI-Bin and httpdocs.
- Plesk: There is a about a 4 second delay when transferring from screen to another.
- Plesk: Unlike cPanel, I've not heard from web hosting providers that Plesk is resource intensive.
- Plesk: When I change the IP address for a site, I often lose the http access to that site. It cannot be corrected without a phone call to the hosting provider. Not even deleting and re-adding the domain will work.
- Plesk: The 30 user of Plesk is a stripped down version. The 10, and 100 on up come with what is termed a Plus pack, and is the only way that you can deploy add-on applications.(Like fantastico)
- Plesk: You don't have to pay for unlimited licensing as is the case with cPanel.
- Plesk: You can give resellers and domain administrators chroot access, but it limits them so they can't really take the OS down.
- Plesk: admin and Reseller automation is a costly add-on.

- cPanel: Setting up multiple FTP sites per domain is trivial
- cPanel: From what I read, updating software is often a problem.
- cPanel: Hosting companies that have clients with busy boxes cannot run cPanel on them even though they do everywhere else because it commonly requires 10% of the cpu power.
- cPanel: UI is nowhere near as intuitive or as well organized as Plesk.
- cPanel: UI is unattractive
- cPanel: If you need to do something, you can be sure the functionality is there if you can find it.
- cPanel: Removing and adding a domain back is a problem.
- cPanel: Only comes in unlimited licenses. It is the same cost as Plesk unlimited.
- cPanel: There is more flexible reseller automation of packages and features.

- Webmin: UI is unattractive
- Webmin: It's about the only control panel that will work with FreeBSD 6.0
- Webmin: People say it will work with about any software available.
- Webmin: People say it has almost a zero resource footprint.

Thanks!

Have you checked out this slick theme for Webmin it looks every bit as good as cPanel. Here is the link http://www.stress-free.co.nz/content/view/141/2/

For every single webhosting i've used, cPanel has always been the most easiest and simplest to use. It can lagg and lack certain aspects at times but overall its easy to use for a noob such as myself.

I wouldn't put Webmin up to any hosting control panel. This is more of a system control panel.

I'm using Plesk at the moment and I must say that I much prefer cPanel, I have never had any quarms with cPanel but plesk is too pop-upy :P I like slim and to the point. Graphics/ui dont bother me as long as the functionality is there

CPanel x for me, the default one, it has all of the features and there very easy to use, the problem i had with Direct Admin E.G was that you would have to setup a PHPbb forum up on yourself it is still easy, but not as easy as CPanel where its just a click of a button. All though Direct Admin seemed more professional and had some nice skins like 'Radience' and all that.

I was using Plesk on my website, it's not bad, but I feel I don't have all the control over the features of my website and the server. But I does a good job.

I personally do use Webmin at the moment does anyone have advice as to what i should switch to useing?

If your not hosting websites for profit. Then I don't see any reason why you would want to go with a paid control panel. The only paid control panel I used was cPanel. Its nice but its not worth the money unless your hosting websites for profit.

No im not hosting for profit so the best idea is to keep what i have?