With the development of new alternative panels soon to hit the market...

[MannDude]

So, there are a handful of individuals out there working on VPS control panels, presumably as a SolusVM replacement. I'm wondering how likely providers are going to be to actually switch to a new product so soon?

Me, I'd be personally afraid to start utilizing a product that is new and has no history of active development, but at the same time I think it's great to see new alternatives hitting the market. If only there were more alternatives for WHMCS and cPanel then we could start seeing hosting providers that aren't so cookie-cutter.

 

[Hassan]

So, there are a handful of individuals out there working on VPS control panels, presumably as a SolusVM replacement. I'm wondering how likely providers are going to be to actually switch to a new product so soon?

Me, I'd be personally afraid to start utilizing a product that is new and has no history of active development, but at the same time I think it's great to see new alternatives hitting the market. If only there were more alternatives for WHMCS and cPanel then we could start seeing hosting providers that aren't so cookie-cutter.

I agree with you about utilizing a newer product in a production environment but I am also excited for some of these panels since a handful of them will be open source and ready for modification.

 

[concerto49]

At least for us, we're moving WHMCS too. A common complaint is integration and having 1 system. Is what I'd prefer to - time to make the change. Developing just a VPS panel will have no benefit - you still need a connector, integration points, etc... it doesn't exactly achieve what you want. Still issues. It's still separate systems.

 

[drmike]

The unified - one - system would rock from my client perspective.

I am excited about the new panels and hope folks follow through and develop alternatives.  Nothing against Solus, but pretty big issues and isn't the first time

 

[concerto49]

The unified - one - system would rock from my client perspective.

I am excited about the new panels and hope folks follow through and develop alternatives.  Nothing against Solus, but pretty big issues and isn't the first time

It annoys me as well from an admin perspective, e.g. a WHMCS ticket is raised. The customer wants more IP addresses. I have to then login to Solus to confirm IPs are available etc and do work between the 2 systems to arrange this for the customer. There are many more examples.

 

[drmike]

It annoys me as well from an admin perspective, e.g. a WHMCS ticket is raised. The customer wants more IP addresses. I have to then login to Solus to confirm IPs are available etc and do work between the 2 systems to arrange this for the customer.

 

The dual logins stink for customers too.  I never can keep things straight.  Always digging in my paper records or if at my main machine, the notepad thing I use to keep track of things.

 

[Tux]

I'll be working on a little cPanel alternative in 2 flavors: Lite and Enterprise. I'm going to work on lite for a while to see if it catches any usage, and if it does I'll work on enterprise.

 

[john]

Blesta V3 seems like a viable alternative to WHMCS. Time will tell since it's still in beta.

 

[XFS_Duke]

I've looked at CurtisG's panel, looks good too. Don't flame me, I'm just saying it looks good.. lol

 

[peterw]

You only know how good a developer and his software is after it breaks the first time. It's easy to develop something that is usable for myself, but the pain starts when different OS versions and different PHP versions and different PHP plugin versions have to be supported. After this step performance issues start. One master system controlling 3 VMs is ok. One master system with 300 VMs and 100 concurrent users break the system.

Glad I am not a software developer.

 

[Shados]

The dual logins stink for customers too.  I never can keep things straight.  Always digging in my paper records or if at my main machine, the notepad thing I use to keep track of things.

I'd seriously suggest putting a KeePass database into a dropbox folder, or using LastPass, or some other alternative. Makes this aspect of things much more simple.

 

[MartinD]

It annoys me as well from an admin perspective, e.g. a WHMCS ticket is raised. The customer wants more IP addresses. I have to then login to Solus to confirm IPs are available etc and do work between the 2 systems to arrange this for the customer. There are many more examples.

A few lines of code would ensure you have an accurate count of used/available IP's in WHMCS. If you provision everything through WHMCS then it wouldn't be difficult to keep track of them

 

[kaniini]

As far as the replacements go, frankly, I think KuJoe's VPSM is the one that is most likely to be successful.

Hopefully they don't write the node-facing software in PHP or anything which does not provide a secure execv() implementation by default.  That'd be a major bummer, dude.

I think Capisso is extremely likely to crash and burn.

edit: I don't count Stallion or Cloudware here because -- a: both projects are already shipping something that is usable in production and, more importantly, b: aren't likely to be used by the industry at large.  So, they don't get counted as contenders here.

 

[Francisco]

I think Capisso is extremely likely to crash and burn.

I think most of them are going to crash & burn. The teams aren't thought out nor are there really any with a full concrete list of what will be in their first release. Some of them are asking for unreasonable upfront funds just to build fairly small addons to WHMCS. Some are throwing beta offers out in hopes of getting a few catches.

I don't think there is many panels planned out so far that were going to be developed prior to this. Maybe the heads of the project thought about it because they didn't like paying for solus, but I think if the amount of signups isn't huge then they'll likely ditch it. Who wants to spend 2+ months developing just to maybe make a few hundred a month? No one.

Lets be serious here. You're all competing for a very small pool of providers, namely those that post on here and LE*.

It's going to take a lot of work to get mainstream appeal and be seen as a real contender to Solus. Yes, Phil always gets antsy at the idea of a competitor but no one has stepped up with a real gameplan as well as dedication to carry it forward.

Let me quote something an old man once said. Are you ready to deal with the burden of your code being exploited and sued over it? You're all US based where it's very easy to start a lawsuit. Solus is in the UK so it's unlikely CVPS/Ramnode are going to try to get international lawyers involved to fight this.

You're an opensource project without any sort of paid option? Fine, you can't be taken to court since it's a "use at your own risk". You're a business that licenses the software? Prepare your anus. Sure you can add some TOS clauses to try to cover yourself but that doesn't mean someone won't burn up some legal funds making your life hell.

Francisco

 

[JDiggity]

The unified - one - system would rock from my client perspective.

I am excited about the new panels and hope folks follow through and develop alternatives.  Nothing against Solus, but pretty big issues and isn't the first time

 
The only problem I have with the AIO systems is if it is hacked all the customer info is out in the wild.

VPSGrid is a work in progress. Soon it will have the api access. He wants to have it all ready before it comes to market. I think once it is fully functional.

 

[kaniini]

I think most of them are going to crash & burn. The teams aren't thought out nor are there really any with a full concrete list of what will be in their first release. Some of them are asking for unreasonable upfront funds just to build fairly small addons to WHMCS. Some are throwing beta offers out in hopes of getting a few catches.


I don't think there is many panels planned out so far that were going to be developed prior to this. Maybe the heads of the project thought about it because they didn't like paying for solus, but I think if the amount of signups isn't huge then they'll likely ditch it. Who wants to spend 2+ months developing just to maybe make a few hundred a month? No one.


Lets be serious here. You're all competing for a very small pool of providers, namely those that post on here and LE*.


It's going to take a lot of work to get mainstream appeal and be seen as a real contender to Solus. Yes, Phil always gets antsy at the idea of a competitor but no one has stepped up with a real gameplan as well as dedication to carry it forward.


Let me quote something an old man once said. Are you ready to deal with the burden of your code being exploited and sued over it? You're all US based where it's very easy to start a lawsuit. Solus is in the UK so it's unlikely CVPS/Ramnode are going to try to get international lawyers involved to fight this.


You're an opensource project without any sort of paid option? Fine, you can't be taken to court since it's a "use at your own risk". You're a business that licenses the software? Prepare your anus. Sure you can add some TOS clauses to try to cover yourself but that doesn't mean someone won't burn up some legal funds making your life hell.


Francisco

Indeed, Francisco -- without a concrete plan to make a minimum viable product, I agree wholeheartedly that each product will fail.

I also agree that there is likely not much money in the VPS panel market.  I think SolusVM is a smaller operation than it appears, and they basically made all their money because KT Ligesh committed suicide.

 

[coreyman]

Much like has already been said, it takes tons of time and effort to try and hit a very small market segment. Success rates will probably be very low due to lack of planning. In Francisco's case he would be paying someone else over $1200/mo for a panel to control his nodes... so he had great incentive to get $1200/mo profit right out of the gates that none of these guys have... they would just be grasping at straws.

 

[Francisco]

Much like has already been said, it takes tons of time and effort to try and hit a very small market segment. Success rates will probably be very low due to lack of planning. In Francisco's case he would be paying someone else over $1200/mo for a panel to control his nodes... so he had great incentive to get $1200/mo profit right out of the gates that none of these guys have... they would just be grasping at straws.

When we did stallion 1 we did it when we were paying them $350/m. We did it because we got tired of waiting on them to finish RDNS on IPV6 and were tired of having to write terrible bash scripts to get around things.

Francisco

 

[Francisco]

Indeed, Francisco -- without a concrete plan to make a minimum viable product, I agree wholeheartedly that each product will fail.

I also agree that there is likely not much money in the VPS panel market.  I think SolusVM is a smaller operation than it appears, and they basically made all their money because KT Ligesh committed suicide.

Honestly this isn't far off the mark (from an outsides opinion). Originally Solus had 2 versions of their panel planned, a regular edition then an 'Enterprise' edition that was supposed to be very feature packed. When KT played hangman Solus changed their plan and outsourced their development.

If you check the decompiles of some of the admin files you'll notice a complete change in coding style.

Francisco

 

[concerto49]

Much like has already been said, it takes tons of time and effort to try and hit a very small market segment. Success rates will probably be very low due to lack of planning. In Francisco's case he would be paying someone else over $1200/mo for a panel to control his nodes... so he had great incentive to get $1200/mo profit right out of the gates that none of these guys have... they would just be grasping at straws.

True that - and agreeing wtih Fran, I don't think it's worth it if that's the aim. Not why I'd be doing it. Doing a strict Solus replacement doesn't work.