Wanted, Control Panel on the Cheap!

As the Web hosting control panel questions keep rolling in, I’ll keep answering them. This latest question came to me after writing the three part series on control panels a few weeks ago for Lockergnome. I made a request for folks to send me any questions they might have about control panels, and they did just that. I received an E-mail from Sheldon about this subject just the other day.

Mitch, Thanks for your site. I am finding some good info there.

I founded (as a BBS in 1991), ran and sold a small ISP. I now have a single web server that I host a school and a church website on. Now a couple more non profits want to host with me too. I am using Windows Server 2k (because I know it best) and setting up things the hard way.

My former company uses Plesk but it is not cheap ($199 for 30 domains). In your research, have you found a functional, low cost or free control panel? I do not need to set up email or DNS, just site and FTP permissions on the web server. Doing it all manually I seem to forget some permission setting every time I do it! Now back to reading your site…

Now I do have to admit, I have yet to stumble across a free Windows-based control panel. If you happen to know of any, please let me know and I’ll be sure to include it in a future article. I suggested to Sheldon that he read through my control panel round up articles to see if he liked any of my examples from there. There are more than a few Windows-based control panels listed. Success! He found something that worked out for him.

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