New to VPS, is cPanel my best option?

I'm on vultr. I used to manage my server myself but it's not worth the time needed. Now I use runcloud to manage my server.

Directadmin is really good, i use it on all my servers

I recommend gopanel.io

As an additional note, I saw someone on the last page mention that there is some form of nulled cPanel posted on here. I haven’t taken the time to look over it, but I’d be very, very wary of using any sort of nulled cPanel on your server. I know that this site thanks to the hard work of people like Tomz the admin has maintained excellent quality keeping the content posted on here clean and free of BS, but I do worry that something like cPanel with the literal thousands of different complex pieces of code that make up the entire software suite, the various interdependencies and security components that require access to stuff like the underlying upcp updates package manager, WHM api, cpsess session manager, etc. make me concerned that at a minimum -- assuming that there isn’t some kind of security risk hidden amongst the code that could be doing anything from a full-on rootkit/backdoor, enabling remote access for unauthorized users/spam emails, etc. — there’s the fact that even if the code was clean, there’s not going to be any way that any ‘nulled’ version of cPanel will be able to work properly.

Like I said in my last post, I have a ton of experience working with cPanel as a server admin/hosting operator as well as from a programming perspective working with it to create plugins/add-on software for use in WHM. So I’m super familiar with how much of the core functionality of it works, and I just don’t see it being possible for someone to properly ‘null’ cPanel in a way that would make it worth using. By this specifically, I mean that the licensing structure for cPanel works by requiring the IP to be registered with cPanel’s licensing server and it runs a daemon within centOS to check your server is legit when running the install. Outside of the install you have regularly scheduled crontab and similarly scheduled background processes that are setup to run and keep the various system components updated and secure (apache, myql, php, cPanel/WHM itself, etc.). So even if it were properly nulled and had all of the individual checks disabled/de-activated, it would very quickly become outdated and insecure as cPanel’s release schedule is quite regular and frequent.

All that aside I obviously support the idea of nulling any software — cPanel included. I just wanted to point out that anyone thinking of installing this should be wary of doing so. Unfortunately while I do think that cPanel is the best of it’s kind of server management software available, they have really screwed over people like myself and others on this board who would use it to administer their personal VPS or dedicated servers, when they changed the pricing structure to basically only be financially feasible for the largest hosters and people who had tons of servers and could afford the financial hit by taking advantage of the bulk pricing.

As far as alternatives go, there sadly aren’t many in the form of good open source options available. CyberPanel is the best one so far in my opinion as the UI is the best of the bunch, and it is actively maintained. Froxlor is another control panel that is open source and is pretty good as well, Virtualizor is another one that is quite cheap and good.

If anyone is interested I can post a guide on how to properly secure your servers on at least a basic level. I can show you how to set up stuff like dynamic DNS and IP whitelisting with a dynamic firewall and login daemon to secure SSH access to your machine only. You should also set up private key authentication for SSH access and remove any password-based access, as well as removing root login ability while creating another user to add to the wheel group/in sudoers, and use that instead. If anyone is interested in how to do this I will write a guide and post it, let me know. I can also put together a list with a bunch of useful services and guide to the options for the most important sysadmin functions to use.

Plesk 100%

Im using CyberPanel in my VPS and so far is doing great! Was pretty easy to install and configure as well.

cralis said:

Hi obbzzz,

I am trying not to use the domain registrars email system and trying to run it on my own vps, Domain registrar would be my last resort, but they have a lot of restriction and they might use a shared IP which could cause some issues in the future, which i am trying to avoid.

Thanks for your suggestion. I really appreciate all your feedback

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I was having the same problem, thats why i use yandex for email and its free. Use their smtp server to solve spam problems. https://connect.yandex.com/portal/admin

netluxe said:

If anyone is interested I can post a guide on how to properly secure your servers on at least a basic level. I can show you how to set up stuff like dynamic DNS and IP whitelisting with a dynamic firewall and login daemon to secure SSH access to your machine only. You should also set up private key authentication for SSH access and remove any password-based access, as well as removing root login ability while creating another user to add to the wheel group/in sudoers, and use that instead. If anyone is interested in how to do this I will write a guide and post it, let me know. I can also put together a list with a bunch of useful services and guide to the options for the most important sysadmin functions to use.

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I would love to see some guides like thatin this forum

OK, my experience. 5 sites on Vultr too.
Never use those professional panel such as Cpanel, try use the personal panel!

I'm now using the opensource AApanel and it's very easy to use for personal and with fashion interface!
One click to go to install LAMP or LNMP, many other software available in the panel , DNS manager, Email manager , file manager!

I have run this panel on my 2 VPS accounts and always saved my time!

CyberPanel is by far the easiest to use. Plus it has EVERYTHING that's needed and powered by LiteSpeed server. I'm using for 8 clients. Every instance is hosted on DigitalOcean.

amit333221 said:

I was having the same problem, thats why i use yandex for email and its free. Use their smtp server to solve spam problems. https://connect.yandex.com/portal/admin

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Hi Thanks for your reply, The only reason I was hesitant to use Yandex is from Russia and I a not sure if I could trust their security and privacy policies.

cralis said:

Hi Thanks for your reply, The only reason I was hesitant to use Yandex is from Russia and I a not sure if I could trust their security and privacy policies.

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Then you need to use G suite

cralis said:

Thanks for your reply, I am using postfix, and really having a headache, i am searching google and really getting confused, I have done spf, DKIM, DMARC and Reverse dns pointer, still goes straight to spam. If there is any article or video which completely explains how to improve the mail delivery it would be wonderful.

Thanks for your help, I really Appriciate it

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if you are hosted with any cloud hosting like, digitalocean, GCP, AWS by default they block port 25, so by using any hoasting panels like cyberpanel, cpanel, plexk emails doesnt work,

you need to change your mail port of postfix from port 25 to either 2525, 465 or 587 .

hope this helped you.

@Hackerino check out these tutorials will help

i always go for cpanel just for compatibility and ease of installing scripts/website cms etc nearly all are ready for cpanel where as other panels may have issues or not be compatible

obbzzz said:

I have opted to deploy a server using Cpanel on Vultr, it is what is most familiar to me, but its kinda ugly and looks dated.. although its not too important in those areas.

I wondered if anyone else has other suggestions of what to use? Or if anyone uses Vultr too and what they have as a setup server wise?

I only host 5 sites, which only one is heavy on data, but with a small user base, and the others are not very demanding.
I just want a simple way to be able to manage a few wordpress sites and a few static sites, and also manage email on my server (while actually using gmail)

cPanel and WHM is ideal if I was reselling or had clients who used the hosting, but they dont and I manage it all and most sites are my own/development sites anyway.. So I am wondering if its actually a bit overkill having cpanel etc.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated

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If you're familiar with the command line, just go with Wordops.
Otherwise, just go with CyberPanel (it's free and will provide you with state-of-the-art OpenLiteSpeed + LSCache + Redis setup with a one line copy and paste command).

rachidjunk said:

If you're familiar with the command line, just go with Wordops.
Otherwise, just go with CyberPanel (it's free and will provide you with state-of-the-art OpenLiteSpeed + LSCache + Redis setup with a one line copy and paste command).

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That's what you can call beeing late in the game
Didn't realise I was answering a many month old post

you can try plesk

RunCloud & CloudPanel ar3 2 control panels I am using now
Fast, Lightweight & Ease to use