Beta launch of hosting-panel.net


Posted on Mar 7, 2022 | By Hosting4Real

We'd like to introduce a new shared hosting offering, based on our in-house developed control panel called hosting-panel.net.

Over the past couple of months we've been working on a new type of hosting panel, which gives us more flexibility than what cPanel today offers, one that fits better to what we want to provide as a hosting company, and hopefully something that will benefit you as well.

The panel itself is made in such a way, we have a single point of entry for all customers, one panel to rule them all - while we're communicating with various systems in the backend. So as a customer you log in using the same control-panel, regardless of which server you're located on (with the exception of our webmail).

The panel isn't as feature-rich as cPanel (which in our own opinion, often comes with too many features, complicating it even more for customers with less experience). We've looked at some of the most used features in cPanel and made sure these are available:

  • Multiple domains per account, with PHP version per domain (PHP 7.3 to 8.1)
  • Automatic SSL certificates issued using Let's Encrypt compatible providers using DNS Validation
  • DNS Editor with support for DNSSEC, SRV, CNAME, TXT, CAA, AAAA, A and MX records.
  • Our in-house rspamd cluster for better filtering of spam-emails (inbound and outbound)
  • Email accounts with per-account quota
  • Multiple databases
  • Backups of files (including email) and databases using JetBackup 5.
  • WordPress Installer (will be expanded to handle other CMS's over time such as Magento 2 and Prestashop 1.7).
  • Single-Signon to phpMyAdmin

There's however a few features we've decided to not implement:

  • FTP
  • cronjob editor
  • File Manager

FTP haven't been implemented because it's a protocol that by default is rather insecure. Instead we offer SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) which runs over SSH instead - it increases the security and simplify the setup. It however does result in, that we cannot restrict file access down to a directory level. That's however rarely needed.

Cronjob editor haven't been implemented yet, we're still thinking of a proper way to do it, cronjobs can, however, be managed from SSH using crontab -e and a normal cronjob syntax.

File Manager won't be implemented, the usage remains low, and implementing it securely tend to be rather complex. Since SFTP is a possibility, it's always advised either way to manage files through this (Most FTP clients support SFTP out of the box).

The panel will remain in beta for quite a bit of time, until we get more feedback from our customers. The panel have been tested quite a bit, but bugs may still exist - over time, we will add additional features such as reseller functionality and an extended 1-click installer with more software.

We've made two plans available during the beta, a "Micro Beta" and a "Small Beta" plan, at a 25% discount, with a limit of 30 accounts per plan. The plans will remain even after we exit beta, so you won't be forced into a higher price afterwards (Other than general inflation adjustments, that we do to our products every few years).

The two plans can be purchased at:

Micro Beta:

- 10GB Disk Space
- 10GB Email Disk Space
- 7 Domains
- 20 Databases
- 250 Email Accounts

Small Beta:

- 20GB Disk Space
- 20GB Email Disk Space
- 14 Domains
- 40 Databases
- 500 Email Accounts

The plans are available in both Netherlands (Europe) and Canada (North America); Yes, this is first time we offer hosting outside of Europe. We will also eventually offer hosting in other locations.

Limitations

The platform comes with a few limitations described below:

  • We only support one layer of subdomains for hosting files, this means you can have shop.mydomain.com, but you cannot have en.shop.mydomain.com - with that said, we rarely see this on the 2000 domains we already host.
  • SSL Certificates can only be issued if using our DNS Servers or if an acme-challenge subdomain is set up if you use external DNS providers.
  • We do not support alias domains at this moment (using the same document root on two domains) from the end-user panel, it can however be added by our support.

Update 15-03-2022:

We've added decoupled/detached email to the panel, and included it in the beta packages. Effectively doubling the disk space.

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