Review of H-Sphere

[PQControls]

Before I signed up with Steadfast, I was using CPanel on my previous host. It's all I've ever used, and I was accustomed to it . However, after just a few weeks w/ Steadfast, I am really beginning to enjoy using H-Sphere. The layout is simple, easy to navigate, and from what I've read, robust as well (less subject to exploits).

I've used H-Sphere once on a different host I had for only a couple days, and I must say that it was much different than the way Steadfast has laid out their panel. The Steadfast panel is far superior. It is very slick, intuitive, and easy to navigate. And for the icing on the cake, I just found out that I can use AWStats (for those that don't know, AWStats is a nice traffic monitoring tool, complete with graphs and details about your traffic flow).

So, I just wanted to say, kudos to everyone at steadfast for providing a top-notch control panel layout, repleat with options. For most users, H-Sphere is more than enough. And its interface is actually much more inviting that cpanel is.

Good job guys.

Davide

[Karl]

We have been using H-Sphere for YEARS now, and we have had many people not come to us because we use H-Sphere instead of cPanel. Those that we have convinced to move over seem to love the change.

Personally, I would never consider using cPanel, as it is simply not an efficient configuration and has WAY too many bugs. I honestly don't see how anyone still uses cPanel.

Thank you for giving me somewhere to point potential clients to to assist in getting them to switch to H-Sphere. Anyone else's comments are also welcomed.

[Hemanth]

Is there price has much ifference.. Mosts of the hosts still using cpanel.

[Karl]

Is there price has much ifference.. Mosts of the hosts still using cpanel.

Well, H-Sphere is priced per user, $4 or so per user one-time. It'll most likely cost more upfront, but should be cheaper long term. Also, because of the nature of H-Sphere you can use the same licenses across as many servers as you want, not needing to get a separate license for every server.

[adb22791]

I've been using H-Sphere now for a few months, and while it took some getting used to it is one of the most advanced and most powerful control panels I have used. While I prefer some of cPanel's easy ways to modify accounts through WHM, H-Sphere has many more features which make it an excellent alternative, especially if you need the power of a cluster.

Alex

[Hemanth]

That's good. Only thing i have negative about H-Sphere is the file manager. Moving files and deleting them takes a lots of time. Also it often end up in a time out. CPanel is really fast in file operations..

[Karl]

That's good. Only thing i have negative about H-Sphere is the file manager. Moving files and deleting them takes a lots of time. Also it often end up in a time out. CPanel is really fast in file operations..

Why not just use FTP? With a good FTP client things should be just as easy and faster than any web based option out there.

[Hemanth]

Why not just use FTP? With a good FTP client things should be just as easy and faster than any web based option out there.
Answer is simple.. All ports except HTTP is blocked in my company network. :D

[PE-Steve]

Answer is simple.. All ports except HTTP is blocked in my company network. :DYou realize that isn't going to help at all with security, correct? I'm sure you have other ports open as well.

[Senad]

Isn't it just horrible when companies shut down certain ports? I've had many friends/colleagues simply despise going to work since they could not use some programs such as IM, etc. Although it does cut down on productivity there are many websites (port 80 http) that can be used to run everything off of now-a-days. DNS Port 25 has to be opened unless they are running an internal/external dns gateway of some sorts that has an overly complex setup (which I would be impressed and happy to see since I'm security oriented :)). The less ports that are open the easier is to watch and manage those ports. FTP is very insecure in itself...unless you have it in a vpn tunnel of some sorts.

In regards to HSphere Vs. CPanel Vs. Interworx Vs. DirectAdmin here at the office we always have a "friendly discussion" about which one is the best :). But seriously its a matter of preference and the ease of administration on the user himself/herself.

=====
:offtopic:?

This thread (well what it is currently discussing) reminds me of when the first VPN protocol wars happened. Well I think it was the VPN Protocol wars...I can't remember at the moment what it actually was :eek: but lets just ay it was VPN for the sake of argument (although it probably wasn't :D). Well anyway companies said ok we will just shut that port down for that vital protocol...so cisco said...ok we will make this then use port 80. Long story short...and I think I lost my point somewhere in the story...ports don't really matter security wise or something of that matter....and yes I now am sure I have no clue where this story is going :). So back to work for me :alien::homer:.

[Kevin]

We're definitely aware that the WebShell file manager needs some love. There are some updates in the pipeline which should come with version 3.0 of H-Sphere. I'm hoping those will resolve the majority of issues. I don't know exactly how far off the release is, unfortunately, as they're taking a lot longer than usual in this release cycle.

=====
:offtopic:?

This thread (well what it is currently discussing) reminds me of when the first VPN protocol wars happened. Well I think it was the VPN Protocol wars...I can't remember at the moment what it actually was :eek: but lets just ay it was VPN for the sake of argument (although it probably wasn't :D). Well anyway companies said ok we will just shut that port down for that vital protocol...so cisco said...ok we will make this then use port 80. Long story short...and I think I lost my point somewhere in the story...ports don't really matter security wise or something of that matter....and yes I now am sure I have no clue where this story is going :). So back to work for me :alien::homer:.

No more sugar for you! :P

[Mike]

Steadfast was my first experience with H-Sphere as well. Luckily, I wasn't much of a CPanel or Plesk fan when I was using them, so I pretty much liked H-Sphere better as soon as I logged in.

I think many that demand CPanel aren't doing it out of preference, but rather out of familiarity. Some people just don't want to learn anything new, whether it's better or not. There's also the convenience of CPanel for host-hoppers that can't seem to find the right host, since it's pretty much everywhere.

[Kevin]

There's also the convenience of CPanel for host-hoppers that can't seem to find the right host, since it's pretty much everywhere.

It's notable that cPanel has a well-known backup format as well. You can get yourself an account backup and have ANY host running cPanel, Plesk, InterWorx, H-Sphere, or any number of other control panels import your account right back in.

[adb22791]

We're definitely aware that the WebShell file manager needs some love. There are some updates in the pipeline which should come with version 3.0 of H-Sphere. I'm hoping those will resolve the majority of issues. I don't know exactly how far off the release is, unfortunately, as they're taking a lot longer than usual in this release cycle.

I think we're looking at about 6 months before we will all get a version that is stable enough to upgrade production boxes to. Another thing about 3.0 is it forces MySQL 5, which is great for probably 90% of my clients, but I know there are some that will need a lot of work done to be ready for that upgrade.

It doesn't seem like it would be too trivial to be able to create a second MySQL Logical Server for MySQL 4, but psoft apparently isn't interested in doing that. Go figure.


Alex

[Kevin]

It doesn't seem like it would be too trivial to be able to create a second MySQL Logical Server for MySQL 4, but psoft apparently isn't interested in doing that. Go figure.

Igor told me that they're pushing MySQL 5 out because MySQL has EOLed 4.0 and 4.1, so there will be no further security or bug fix releases for that line. Control Panels like iworx and plesk use the built-in OS releases for MySQL, so they'll continue to be supported by their OS vendors for the life cycle of the OS.

cPanel has switched new installs to MySQL 5 already and if you upgrade you're not permitted to go back. P-Soft seems to generally prefer not allowing people to lag behind with software updates, though with the new system, you can set up the hspackages step in the upgrader to exclude the MySQL 5 update indefinitely if you want to.

The upgrade to MySQL 5.0 is not going to be nearly the headache that MySQL 4.0 -> 4.1 was, and that all-in-all didn't end up being terrible. The worst issue we had involved a few customers who had ISAM databases, which 4.1 binaries don't support any longer in favor of MyISAM, so we had to convert them on another system after the upgrade.