cPanel Alternative: CyberPanel! Hosting Control Panel for LiteSpeed

cPanel has been around for ages, there are many people using cPanel but due to its cost, they are always looking for cPanel alternative. There are hundreds of cPanel alternatives out there but today we will talk about CyberPanel. CyberPanel not only is a great cpanel alternative, but it is super fast as well. Sites running on CyberPanel are fast, as CyberPanel use OpenLiteSpeed as a server in the free version and LiteSpeed Enterprise Web Server in the paid version.

CyberPanel is super easy to use due to its user-friendly GUI (Graphical User Interface). According to current users, the learning curve is not very hard when they shift to CyberPanel. CyberPanel has 2 variants, one is free and the other is paid. We will first learn the difference below.

CyberPanel for free

The free variant of CyberPanel comes with OpenLiteSpeed. Apart from that, it is 100% the same as the paid version of CyberPanel except for the containerization feature. However, if you are using CyberPanel for personal use, the containerization feature does not make sense to you.

CyberPanel paid or CyberPanel Enterprise

The paid version of CyberPanel comes with the LiteSpeed Enterprise Web Server. At the time of this writing, there are only a few differences between OpenLiteSpeed and LiteSpeed Enterprise. Let’s discuss them below:

  1. LiteSpeed Enterprise have ESI (hole punching)
  2. QUIC (QUIC is planned to be included in OpenLiteSpeed as well)
  3. Full .htaccess support, whereas OpenLiteSpeed also has support for .htaccess but it is limited to certain features.

If you want to learn other differences in details you can visit here.


What should I choose, CyberPanel or CyberPanel Enterprise?

Now there comes a great question. How can I determine as to what server I need?

You are good with OpenLiteSpeed, if:

  1. You just have a normal WordPress blog.
  2. WordPress blog with WooCommerce but you don’t use ESI.
  3. Forum scripts like Vanilla or other forums scripts that do not rely heavily on the .htaccess file.
  4. Drupal-based sites.
  5. Joomla Based sites.

Or any other sites that don’t heavily rely on .htaccess files and don’t require ESI feature.

You will definitely need LiteSpeed Enterprise, if:

  1. If you are using ESI hole punching on WordPress, mostly needed with WooCommerce stores and shopping sites.
  2. Magento and Prestashop stores as their cache plugins require ESI.
  3. And apart from that, almost everything is compatible with LiteSpeed Enterprise.

Features that come with CyberPanel

Let’s list out some major features that come with CyberPanel.

  1. OpenLiteSpeed or LiteSpeed Enterprise Webserver
  2. Mail Server (Postfix/Dovecot/Rainloop)
  3. Email Marketing Tool Kit.
  4. Security via FirewallD and SSH Hardening options.
  5. FTP Server
  6. DNS Server
  7. Docker Manager
  8. Containrization.
  9. Email Limits

All these features are available via just one install command, we will see how we can install and use CyberPanel as a cpanel alternative in this tutorial.


Step 1: Get your self a VPS

The first step is to get yourself unmanaged or managed vps with CyberPanel.

Once your VPS is ready login to your platform account.

  1. From left sidebar click Services.
  2. Then click Manage on your recently ordered service.

Now click Manage CyberPanel and it will take you to the page, where you can remotely manage CyberPanel through our platform giving you many extra features. We are further going to discuss additional points in our next steps.


Step 2: Update DNS for your domain

Before moving on to creating your website, we will first make sure that DNS records are properly set. Since our domain is registered at NameCheap we will demonstrate through it. However, for other domain registrars, it is pretty much similar. Login to your NameCheap account. In your NameCheap dashboard, you will see a list of your registered domains such as:

Click Manage for the domain you are going to use, in this example we are using cyberhosting.org.

After clicking Manage, click Advanced DNS, and create your first nameserver.

Here 192.168.100.1 will be IP of your server make sure to replace it with the IP of your server and finally click done. This will create the following nameserver

ns1.yourdomain.com -> 192.168.100.1

Similarly, create a second nameserver such as ns2.yourdomain.com

 

 

  1. Click Domain from the top menu again, it will take you to the main dashboard for the domain.
  2. From drop-down select Custom DNS and enter nameservers you just created above.
  3. Finally, click the Tick Mark.

Once all of these steps are done, you are ready to create your first website through our platform. However, if you don’t want to go into the hassle of registering private nameserver you can skip everything above and set up your dns on CloudFlare using this guide. With Cloudflare all you have to do is set their provided nameservers and then add A records in their dashboard, you can also turn on Cloudflare proxy for speed improvements, but it is the topic of another day.


Step 3: Create Website in CyberPanel

After clicking Manage CyberPanel from the last step you will land on a page that will look like:

Click Create Website, so that it can take you to create a website page.

Fill the Create Website form and click Create Website. Please note that you can also check SSL and Apache as the Back End option. Learn more about Apache as Back End option for SSL option to work make sure your DNS records for the domain are already updated as discussed in the step above. Once the website is created, we can move on to further important settings like creating an FTP account or database for your application.


Step 4: Creating an FTP Account

Once the website is created, click on your service ID. You will be brought back to the page where you can manage your sites created in the CyberPanel.

Click the launch icon.

From the left sidebar, click Create FTP Account under FTP. Fill in all the details and click Create FTP button. You can leave the path empty and the default path will be used which is usually document root of the website (i.e. /home/domain.com). But if you set some path such as helloworld the final path will be relative to document root such as /home/domain.com/public_html/helloworld.

FTP Account is necessary to upload your website/application files. But if you are going to use our Auto Installer creating FTP account is not really necessary.


Step 5: Creating a Database Account

If you followed our previous step you are already on the page from where you can click Create Database from the left sidebar, if not, you can click Server ID from top, launch the website and then you will land on the page where you are able to create a database for websites.

Fill in all the details and click Create Database. However as discussed in the last step, if you have used our Auto Installer, it will also take care of database creation, so you need not create a database as well.


Step 6: Backup Strategy

Until now you can guess how easy it is to use CyberPanel which makes it a great cPanel alternative. However, without a proper backup strategy, you can’t have a good night sleep. Our platform provides you various automatic ways to configure daily/weekly backups. You can configure daily/weekly backups to following storage services:

  1. AWS S3 (You can sign with AWS to get 5GB space for free)
  2. DigitalOcean Spaces
  3. Or self-hosted S3 Compatible MINIO Storage.

Configure Backups to AWS S3

Login to our dashboard and go to services and select the service on which you want to configure backups. And click Manage CyberPanel.

On this page scroll down and click S3 Backups. Which will land you on this page:

 

First, you need to connect your AWS account. You can create a separate user through Amazon IAM Console. More detailed instructions are available here. Make sure you give that user programmatic access and access to S3 related operations in your account. Finally, click Connect Account.

From the left sidebar, click Create Backup Plan. So that you can finally send backups to AWS S3. Before creating a plan make sure you have created a new bucket in AWS S3 as you need to select a bucket to send backups to. On the create plan page you will be asked for:

  1. Plan Name – Plan names are used to identify backup plans when they are sent to AWS S3 Buckets
  2. AWS S3 Bucket: AWS S3 Bucket that will be used to store backups
  3. Frequency: How often the backup will be generated and sent (Daily/Weekly)
  4. Finally, select domains that you want to include in the backup plan.

Once all of these are configured, just click Create Plan. You can also force run a backup at any point or view backups log right through our platform.

Configure backups to DigitalOcean Spaces

Login to our dashboard and go to services and select the service on which you want to configure backups. And click Manage CyberPanel.

On this page scroll down and click DO Backups. Which will land you on this page:

 

First, you need to connect your DigitalOcean account. Credentials can be configured in your DigitalOcean Apps & API section. Finally, click Connect Account. Once connected, the page will refresh and gives you confirmation that your account is successfully connected.

From the left sidebar, click Create Backup Plan. So that you can finally send backups to DigitalOcean Spaces. Before creating a plan make sure you have created a new Space as you need to select space to send backups to. On the create plan page you will be asked for:

  1. Plan Name – Plan names are used to identify backup plans when they are sent to DigitalOcean spaces
  2. Region: Select the region where you have created a space to store backups
  3. DO Bucket: DO Bucket/Space that will be used to store backups
  4. Frequency: How often the backup will be generated and sent (Daily/Weekly)
  5. Finally, select domains that you want to include in the backup plan.

Once all of these are configured, just click Create Plan. You can also force run a backup at any point or view backups log right through our platform.


Conclusion

We’ve discussed almost every angle that is needed to run a basic or advanced site. From creating a website to creating a database and finally choosing the backup strategy we did it all. As you can see it is super easy and convenient which makes CyberPanel a great cPanel alternative. Depending upon your needs you can either choose a free or paid version as well.

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