There are two fairly important things to know about DTC.

The ‘stable’ branch, which is available from Thomas Goirand’s deb-repository, is a lag-behind branch, which mostly gets fixes and security updates, while all the new features are added to the git-hosted master branch http://git.gplhost.com/dtc.git/. When I intended to run commercial hosting with DTC, the idea was to use git repository as primary source, creating a new local branch of it to keep all customizations and fixes. That definitely requires some technical expertise.

Another thing is that Thomas (DTC initiator and current project leader) seems to have abandoned selling shared hosting using DTC, and switched to selling VPS. The feature is still there, because other people need it, and Thomas himself does maintain shared-hosting related functionality. But, as with almost any other software out there (both free and non-free), if you need a new shared hosting feature, you will either have to program it yourself (or hire someone), or depend on contributors to develop it.

Hopefully, Omega is not as insecure as VHCS (its predecessor) was said to be.

I haven’t done any newer comparisons of hosting control panels, and things might have changed since this post. So I don’t really know which one would earn the “Best” badge this time.

I’m not familiar with the Pro version of virtualmin, but if going with a cheap non-free panel, I’d have a look at HSphere first – it seems to cater for all the major needs of hosting users.

Still using DTC or switched to something else ?

In my opinion virtualmin is currently the best one avilable. I mean the pro, which i cant afford right now.

If you are looking for something simple and yet robust with many features that others don’t offer in their control panel take a look at HMSPANEL from http://www.hmspanel.com.

The software runs much faster than others and gets things done. They are also throwing in a billing system that is optional for use but it is there for those who may need it.

Another great feature is that you can attach multiple servers to the master server and you can manage them from the same administration page. You can basically provision IPs and hosting accounts from one place on any of the additional servers.

Cheers!

Mike

thank you for the suggestion. I have had a look at both and have the following impressions to share:

OpenPanel doesn’t seem to be really actively developed (last beta release in the middle of previous year). Also, based on what I have seen on screenshots, it looses feature-wise to DTC. As another comparison, I’ve seen DTC running on many other servers, while OpenPanel is a fresh, not yet tested product (and this time I wasn’t looking for something to test). What I do like about OpenPanel is that (correct me if I’m wrong) it is using Unix users system for its purposes (DTC isn’t). I also do like the CLI of OpenPanel, though I’m sure similar functionality is available in DTC (but I’ve never tried). Interface of OpenPanel also gains it an extra point.

ispCP is a descendant of VHCS, which was abandoned in circa 2004. At the time I tried, their demo site was not accessible – so I’m judging by the screenshots here as well :(. Although I like ispCP Omega a bit more than OpenPanel, it is also too fresh to be tried – not really in production.

Anyway, I think these too panels yet have to grow a bit to match DTC.