Managed cPanel VPS

[D. Strout]

One of the clients I work with is feeling some pinching on his current shared cPanel hosting account, and is ready to move up to a VPS. He wants cPanel, and he'll need management, so I'm wondering what y'all can tell me about managed cPanel VPS hosting. Providers, cost, caveats, etc. Not necessarily looking for offers yet, just general thoughts.

 

[nunim]

A decent managed cPanel VPS is going to cost you at least $30-40/mo as you'll want at least 2GB of ram for cPanel.

They'll do pretty much everything for you, read the TOS carefully and ask about their 3rd party support.  Some hosts will do a best effort on 3rd party software, so refuse to support it at all so depending on your needs you'll want to be sure that they'll support your CMS.

I'd recommend KnownHost, they've been around for ages, have great reviews and they have a rep here on VPSB (@KnownHost-Jonathan):

https://www.knownhost.com/

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

Honestly, just go with a provider you already trust and know would lend you a hand if you needed it.  The actual cPanel install is piss-easy, and requires next-to-no configuration on the VM itself.  And once it's installed, you're right back to managing a cPanel interface, which you're already used to.

 

[raindog308]

WiredTree or Knownhost.  I've used both and had a good experience with both.  My extended comments are at the site in my sig but in short, both are good.  WiredTree's plans have a little more disk, while KnownHost's have a little more RAM, but they're pretty close.

 

[D. Strout]

Honestly, just go with a provider you already trust and know would lend you a hand if you needed it.  The actual cPanel install is piss-easy, and requires next-to-no configuration on the VM itself.  And once it's installed, you're right back to managing a cPanel interface, which you're already used to.

While there's certainly something to be said for going it "alone" with cPanel, I expect to be out of the picture in a few months, so I don't want an e-mail landing in my inbox every time there's a new exploit. I want my client to feel perfectly comfortable sending an e-mail to the support dept. of whatever company I pick asking them to do some heavy lifting. That, and I don't know CentOS well, so I don't really want to delve in to the system at all beyond installing cPanel.

I'd recommend KnownHost, they've been around for ages, have great reviews and they have a rep here on VPSB (@KnownHost-Jonathan):

https://www.knownhost.com/

First on Google for "managed cPanel hosting", 15% off, 2 IPs, and the recommendations of two vpsB members? Good stuff. I'll keep them in mind.

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

While there's certainly something to be said for going it "alone" with cPanel, I expect to be out of the picture in a few months, so I don't want an e-mail landing in my inbox every time there's a new exploit. I want my client to feel perfectly comfortable sending an e-mail to the support dept. of whatever company I pick asking them to do some heavy lifting. That, and I don't know CentOS well, so I don't really want to delve in to the system at all beyond installing cPanel.

Hmm, true enough.  But, on the upside, the only thing you have to know about CentOS is how to `yum update; yum install screen perl wget`.  Other than that, it's literally a single command to install cPanel (wget | sh a file), and it handles the rest.  Answer a few questions when it prompts you, and you're done (after waiting an hour or so for it to compile everything, all automated).  Once installed, you never really need to use the CLI again - you can handle practically all aspects of the VPS from within cPanel itself.

 

[AMDbuilder]

If your goal is ultimately to setup "shared" hosting on steroids for your client, and they aren't familiar with server management (or just don't want to fuss with it).  You might be better off with a fully managed server, instead of simply a Managed VPS.  The difference being fully managed servers you don't get root access, so all of the configuration is handled for you.

You retain the benefits of Shared hosting with the performance of a VPS server.  There is nothing wrong with a Managed VPS, cPanel itself isn't hard to install or manage if you know what you're doing.

 

[Francisco]

cPanel's pretty decent on RAM these days, a 1GB VPS will handle pretty well with some tuning, assuming you aren't getting mountains of traffic.

Our plans are more or less managed at this point, we just haven't done an official change yet. You'd be looking at plan + $12/month for the cPanel license.

Francisco

 

[TurnkeyInternet]

If your client has the budget, the full management is best (plus usually includes some extra level of backup/restore off site so in case they get their content defaced, like wordpress - they have options to roll back - you'd be suprised how some clients may not notice for months their defaced/hacked wordpress install and need backups going back far beyond a standard vps/cpanel backup schedule and managed services usually cover longer rotations.

 

[ParkInHost]

Its good idea to upgrade. Discuss with the providers for more details on how they provide their service to you and if its flexible. Budget should not be a big issue since there are providers with all range. Best support is what you need end of the day.