What are the best open-source hosting control panels in 2024? With a slew of options to choose from, we’ll cover the most popular ones to help you reach a decision. A web hosting control panel is software for system administrators, developers, and website users alike. Their primary use lies in managing the server and software on those servers, such as websites and webmail.
Managing the server via the control panel offers many features, including
- User account management
- Database management
- File management
- Domains adding and forwarding
- Modifying PHP settings,
- Changing DNS settings
- Installing SSL certificates
- Monitoring uptime
- …and much more
Table of Contents
Hestia Control Panel
The Hestia Control panel is a free and open-sourced hosting control panel that is a fork of the Vesta control panel. It offers a variety of features and has become a significant competitor to premium paid control panels. Using the Hestia Control panel is cost-effective because it provides almost the same features as the paid ones, such as managing user accounts, installing SSL certificates, backups, CMS installations in one click, DNS zone management, etc.
Hestia Control panel supports Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 20.04, Debian 10, 11, and 12. Installation of the Hestia CP is simple: download and execute the bash script, which may take up to 15 minutes. Once the panel is installed it can be accessed on the IP address and the port 8083 using the admin username and password displayed after completion of the installation. The Hestia Control panel is modern and easy to use, and you will not regret choosing it.
Webmin
Webmin is a free and open-sourced hosting control panel developed among the oldest control panels. It offers several features, including Support for cloud and virtualized environments, Interface customization, a File manager, Backup configuration, SSH configuration, Apache management, MySQL management, FTP management, and firewall configuration. Webmin is suitable for system administrators with more experience than beginners. It is not a beginner-friendly control panel, but the offered and free features make it one of the most used open-sourced web hosting panels.
CyberPanel
The cyber panel is a free and open-sourced hosting control panel developed and powered by OpenLiteSpeed. Its interface is modern and user-friendly and has many features for managing Users, Websites, Packages, Databases, DNS, Email, FTP, Backup, Incremental Backup, SSL, and many more. One thing that makes this control panel unique is its LiteSpeed Web server, among the Apache and Nginx. Also, this control panel is suitable for developers because it offers Docker management containerization and a staging environment for websites. One-click installations exist for the most popular applications, such as WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. On top of all, CyberPanel offers a graphic interface for Docker application management. It is entirely free, and choosing it will make your work easier.
Ajenti
Ajent is a free, open-source hosting control panel with a fast and responsive web interface. It is built to configure and monitor services such as Apache, MySQL, Nginx, FTP, File System Management, Firewall, and many more system administrator-related tasks. Ajenti supports Debian greater than Debian 9, Ubuntu 18.04 or later, and AlmaLinux 8. The interface is similar to the Webmin interface, but the one thing that makes this control panel usable is that it has a mobile-friendly interface, and you can manage your server through your mobile device.
ISPConfig
ISPConfig, is a free and open-sourced control panel. It provides a vibrant feature set such as load balancing, clustering, user and reseller management, DNS service, and Database services, and works with Apache and Nginx from the web servers. ISPConfig is best suited for system administrators and advanced users. It has vast community support and is supported on Debian 10, Debian, 11, Debian 12, Ubuntu 18.04, Ubuntu 20.04, and Ubuntu 22.04
aaPanel
aaPanel is a free and open-sourced hosting control panel that offers the most features of the other free control panels. The features are divided in categories such as Core Functions, Website Manager, Environment, System Tools, aaPanel plugin, Storage plugin, and one-click deploy website. Let’s explain these in more detail:
Core Functions: This section is about the LAMP, LEMP stacks, Database manager, FTP Manager, Crontab manager, File System etc.
Website manager: In this section, we have Backup and restore as features, PHP management, ReverseProxy, Redirects, SSL installation, etc
Environment: This section manages phpMyAdmin, MongoDB, Memcached, Tomcat, PureFTP, Redis, PM2 manager, and many more.
System Tools: The System Tools section contains a Firewall, Logs, Supervisor, and Linux Tools.
aaPanel Plugin: The aaPanel section includes features such as One-click migration, One-Click website deployment, SSH Terminal, DNS Manager, Fail2ban, etc.
Storage plugin: This is for storage only. From storage, you are offered FTP storage, AWS S3 storage, GoogleCloud Storage, and Google Drive storage.
One-click deploy website: With one-click deploy, we can install the most popular software, such as WordPress, Laravel, Joomla, Drupal, Roundcube, etc.
Conclusion
We discussed the most used and best open-source hosting control panels in the previous paragraphs. Before you choose the right control panel, you can always find a tutorial on our blog on how to install it on your computer or virtual machine and test it. Of course, suppose you do not have experience with any Linux distro and control panels. In that case, you can always contact us, and our admins will help you with any aspect of it, like installation, configuration of your control panel, etc. You simply sign up for one of our NVMe VPS plans and submit a support ticket. We are available via live chat and tickets 24/7.
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