cPanel vs. Plesk vs. DirectAdmin

[SSJ Sonic-X]

I don't have much experience in running my own website, so I need some opinions on what website database is the best. When asked, I heard these 3 come up a lot. What've you got to say?

[websitedatabases]

I kind of like the combination of cPanel with phpmyadmin for managing my database driven sites. It makes manage my sites and managing the backend of a MySQL database very nice for me. I do not know about the other control panels for managing database driven sites cPanel has served me well. So I guess that's my opinoin.

[OD-Ryan]

My favorite is Direct Admin. It is the first I ever used and it is very easy to use. Currently I use cPanel which to my knowledge is the best and probobly what you should use. Plesk is out of the questin I hate t it sucks. I guess its all your own preference.

[Browning]

cpanel is easy, once you get the hang of it. I havent been using it for long, but I absolutely love it

[SSJ Sonic-X]

Thanks. I think I'll go with cPanel, as I hear about it a lot.

[da king]

Deffinatly go for cPanel. It's accepted the most for a reason. I personally use cpanel; however, I do some experience with DirectAdmin. It was used before with my free host, before I switched to paid hosting. Don't get me wrong, it's not horrible or anything, but generally I think cPanels better. It's simply more user-friendly and easier to navagate with.

Just my experience and thoughts.

[Lpspider]

I've never used Plesk...has anybody here? Did you like it? What does it have that cPanel/DirectAdmin/etc. don't have?

[Hot sauce]

Cpanel all the way

[dschlaegel]

I use Plesk for all my systems. I have used all the major ones and Plesk has been the easiest to implement my custom site builder/hosting software. Really I could write a list of features I hate in Plesk but I have always had more problems with the rest. Im just glad no one brought up Enism, that one drove me crazy for about an entire year. It was pre-installed before I was there and I have no clue how that company is still in business.

The main featue I DO like on Plesk is the PleskAPI. I can easily control the entire process from my own sitebuilder/billing sytem with no problems. Plus development was very fast.

It all just depends on what you require for your own business. Personally, if I don't need all the automation/api bling of Plesk I use cpanel as well.

- Dave

[mwhym]

As the original question seemed to be about databases I will stick to that.

It really depends on how complicated your site is, and to some extend how much traffic you expect to have.

MySQL is really great, its also free. However in my experience, the more advanced things get and the more ussage it gets then the better your scripts ned to be designed and the better the hardware needs to be. With sound coding techniques you can achieve results that rival the commercial version sql databases such as MSsql and oracle. There are a few others but the support for them is much less.