Hey y’all,
I’m currently running a VPS on Hetzner with Apache and PHP, and I’m on the hunt for a completely free alternative to cPanel to manage my server. I’m looking for something user-friendly but still powerful enough to handle things like managing domains, databases, and the usual web hosting tasks.
I’ve seen a few options like Webmin, Virtualmin, and VestaCP, but I’d love to hear about your experiences and any recommendations you might have. Are there other options I should check out? What have you found to be the most reliable and easy to use?
For me, HestiaCP is a solid choice. CloudPanel is good too, but it only works with Nginx, not Apache. Hestia can do both Apache and Nginx, or just Nginx if you prefer.
Just a heads up, both of these need to be installed on a fresh Ubuntu or Debian setup
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It’s not free, but for $5 a month, you get your first 33 websites for free.
Check out Enhance.com—I’ve been using it for a couple of months, and it’s really nice
I’ve been using virtualmin for 20 years now and am happy with it
AlmaLinux 9 with Webmin is a solid setup. Manually install MySQL, then add OpenLiteSpeed and PHP 8.2 packages. For email, set up Postfix and Dovecot for SMTP, and use an external SMTP service like SendPulse for transactional emails. Secure everything with Hetzner Firewall, and restrict admin ports like SSH, 10000, 8080, etc., to your personal home IP. This is the setup I use, and it works great.
If you want apache at npt Nginx, ive started evaluating KeyHelp and found it pretty good.
It supports ARM64 which is also very nice.
HestiaCP just lack proper multiuser support and a pain not having any virtualhost modifications in the gui
You can check out CloudPanel and aaPanel - good developer support.