There’s no denying that web hosting is a challenging and exciting adventure for any business. For bigger businesses, sometimes that hassle of managing a website can become too much and so they utilise the services of a dedicated web host to ensure that their web presence is secure.
But what is going on behind the scenes at these web hosts?
Well that’s just the magic of the internet and the wizards that run the servers.
Often these servers will have a web host panel, essentially a web interface that allows them to easily manage all the services (HTTP, SSL, POP3, IMAP and plenty more acronyms) in one easy to access place.
Over the years, there have been quite a few different offerings (mostly paid, and definitely not cheap) such as Pleask, cPanel, Virtualmin, Webmin and HestiaCP.
All these varying degrees of service control and also customer friendliness.
That’s where aaPanel has thrown it’s hat into the ring.
aaPanel has been built from the ground up to be a lightweight and resource-efficient control panel. By trimming alot of the nice-to-have features and focusing on the modern and responsive services, aaPanel delivers speed and performance on smaller servers that even some of the top control panels wouldn’t consider.
Add to this a clean and modern interface, aaPanel makes it easy to manage all your client information and domains within one consolidated panel.
Pricing Comparison
But aaPanel doesn’t just stop there. Let’s have a look at what an industry staple, cPanel charges for their server licence:
Clear as mud isn’t it?
So let’s simplify this, if you wanted a single account on your server, with unlimited domains, it would cost you $26.99 (AUD) a month. That’s on top of whatever you are paying for the server itself. Pretty pricey.
So what does the aaPanel pricing look like:
I think the simplicity in their pricing sums up exactly the benefit to be had.
If you want to run a single account with an unlimited amount of domains/websites, it will cost you a sum total of $0 (AUD).
Pretty attractive right?
Even their PRO membership is well priced against cPanel’s at $28 per month, not to mention the more dedicated hosts can purchase a lifetime licence for the equivalent of $699 (that equates to $58.20 if spread out over a year).
cPanel is definitely the industry leader and has been a fantastic performer over the years, but their prices have been creeping further and further upwards.
How easy is it really?
I’ve provisioned a small VPS server to test this – 4 vCPUs, 2GB of RAM and 59GB of HDD space.
cPanel would baulk at such a small server and expect that I ran as little as possible on it because of the bloat of their panel.
aaPanel however seems not to even bat an eye.
I’ve chosen to install Ubuntu 24.04 (current release) on the VPS and 5 minutes after provisioning, I’ve got my shell open through Putty.
Ensuring that I’m logged in to root I fire up the aaPanel one-touch-installation script
URL=https://www.aapanel.com/script/install_7.0_en.sh && if [ -f /usr/bin/curl ];then curl -ksSO "$URL" ;else wget --no-check-certificate -O install_7.0_en.sh "$URL";fi;bash install_7.0_en.sh aapanel
And away my server goes installing everything required.
After watching the installation script do it’s magic for 3 mins and 46 seconds (your speed many vary based on server and internet specifications), I’m presented with a happy little confirmation of installation and the details of how to access my aaPanel installation.
aaPanel creates a secure (gateway) address that must be used prior to an administrator login.
Putting this address in my browser, I’m greeted a self signed certificate notice, which I accept and then on to the aaPanel login screen.
Entering in the provided details from the installation script, I am then presented with the welcome screen confirming that my installation was indeed successful.
Less than 5 mins and I have a functional web host panel.
Now the hard decision:
These options are really down to personal or professional preference.
My choice of options is here:
Making sure I’ve selected the newer version for each module, I hit the “One-Click” button and aaPanel goes off to install my selections.
I now have a fully function LNMP server at my disposal and without any of the hassles of having to pay for aaPanel.
Is it worth it?
For a sum total monthly cost of $0 for the free version, aaPanel is an extremely well featured, efficient and lightweight control panel that can turn even the newest of server administrators into a confident one.
aaPanel offers a very user friendly interface without the bloat and price tag alot of more seasoned competitors come with.
Should you give it a go? Yes, it’s not going to cost you anything to try and you might even enjoy it!
