What reseller control panel features will reduce your workload? What hosting software programs are integrated with reseller control panel or work with it? What website control panel features will your clients like?

In this article, we’ve compared four quality web hosting reseller software programs:

• Alabanza
• cPanel
• H-Sphere
• Plesk

All of these reseller control panels come with control panels for your clients. They all have numerous features — advanced email management, web statistics, pre-installed scripts, multi-language support, and more. They all work on Linux platforms, while H-Sphere and Plesk also work with Windows. According to cPanel website, a Windows version of cPanel is in development.

Other features that set these control panels apart are their degree of automation, number of features and ease of use for end user, and features and ease of use for you, reseller.

Alabanza

When you become an Alabanza reseller, you don’t just have a reseller account — you lease a dedicated server from Alabanza. Alabanza owns control panel <em>and</em> server, and you resell directly for Alabanza. If you lease a dedicated Alabanza server, you can create your own reseller accounts. However, only you can set up hosting plans; resellers below you will be limited to hosting plans that you create.

Alabanza offers resellers a high degree of automation with its Domain System Manager (DSM), which can significantly reduce overhead and time spent on routine tasks:

• Account creation
• Billing and invoice management
• Credit card processing
• Domain registration
• Email notifications
• Ordering fraud protection

Even novices can sell hosting with this level of automation.

DSM also integrates with bulkregister.com for domain name registration. It does not easily integrate with other domain registrars, though.

A key Alabanza feature that resellers can offer their clients is Xpress Product Suite, which provides web development and email management tools. The Xpress Product Suite includes SiteXpress, a website-building program that features over 300 templates and requires no web design skills.

cPanel

For resellers and end users, cPanel is known for its ease of use and range of features. cPanel’s collection of over 50 pre-installed scripts and Fantastico auto installer help clients set up their sites with little web development knowledge.

A basic cPanel reseller account comes with two separate programs for resellers to manage their business:

• WHM (Web Host Manager) is used to create accounts and packages, add and suspend sites, modify passwords, view bandwidth usage, park domains, install SSL certificates, and perform other administrative functions.
• From reseller’s cPanel control panel, a drop-down menu takes reseller to control panels for each of sites on reseller account, including reseller’s site.

1. Content Ownership – You might not own space, but it is your content. That means that you should expect some sort of notice if service is going offline so that you can make alternative arrangements or save your information to your computer.

2. Tools – Surprisingly many free web hosting accounts come with lots of tools that you can use to enhance your site. The larger hosting provider or hosting community, more tools you will have in your control panel.

3. Free domain names – Usually you are getting a subdomain or even a subfolder for your files. Typically free domain names only come with a paid hosting account. The reasons is that bandwidth is very expensive and no one wants to build up a free web hosting service unless they have access to cheap resources.