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When using a VPS, especially a Linux VPS for website hosting purposes, you may need to install certain software on the server to enable your website to function. For technically inclined individuals, they may choose VPS scripts such as Centminmod, LarVPS, or WordOps for quick installation of website hosting environments on VPS.
However, for users who are not familiar with technical operations, they may require a control panel software to install on their VPS and manage their server through an intuitive interface.
While paid control panel solutions like cPanel, DirectAdmin, and Plesk are excellent, cost can be a significant obstacle. Fortunately, we still have various options for using free control panels to meet simple website management needs on VPS.
Last week, AZDIGI posted a small comparison on Facebook regarding the most popular free control panel options currently available, making it easier for users to choose the most suitable solution for themselves.
In this article, AZDIGI will provide more detailed information about the top three free control panels for Linux VPS, evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of each. All control panels discussed in this article are designed to operate on Linux operating systems and support websites using the PHP programming language.
Read more: High-speed VPS hosting services at AZDIGI
Comparing the free Linux control panels
aaPanel – 10/10 rating
aaPanel is a widely mentioned free control panel for Linux servers, known for its excellent advantages.
Firstly, aaPanel is lightweight. AZDIGI has tested it on various VPS and dedicated servers, and it only consumes around 200MB of RAM after installation, with low CPU usage.
The reason for aaPanel’s lightweight nature is its “plug-n-play” design. During installation, only the interface and core components are installed. Additional applications can be installed as needed.
Currently, aaPanel provides excellent support for the two most popular webservers, NGINX and Apache, and supports PHP from older versions like PHP 5.6 to the latest PHP 8.0. It also supports OpenLiteSpeed and self-configuration, although the author of this article hasn’t personally used OpenLiteSpeed on aaPanel, so its performance is unknown.
The second outstanding feature provided by aaPanel is its library of pre-integrated software. With a single click, you can install and use various features such as Google Drive Backup, which automatically backs up website data on your VPS to your Google Drive account.
However, aaPanel’s drawback is that the default configuration for the MySQL/MariaDB service may be a bit high, leading to frequent occurrences of the service automatically shutting down and being unable to restart.
To resolve this issue, you need to navigate to the MariaDB/MySQL settings, choose Optimization, and lower the configuration to prevent service hanging. Additionally, aaPanel currently doesn’t support user permission features, allowing only access to the control panel via a single account.
It’s worth mentioning that aaPanel is an international product from BAOTA Panel, a popular and powerful control panel in the current Chinese market.
In summary, aaPanel is suitable for those who need a compact control panel for low-configured VPS, with fewer minor issues but strong personal usage.
Refer to the aaPanel tutorial at AZDIGI.
CyberPanel – 8/10 rating
CyberPanel was a popular choice before aaPanel gained widespread popularity due to its powerful features and strong support for OpenLiteSpeed (including the LiteSpeed Webserver Enterprise edition), which is currently considered the fastest web server. That’s why AZDIGI exclusively uses LiteSpeed Webserver Enterprise for our high-quality hosting services.
If you use CyberPanel and want to use LiteSpeed Webserver Enterprise, you can purchase the CyberPanel Bundle license package for as low as $11/month.
A notable advantage of CyberPanel is its support for user permission mechanisms, allowing you to create multiple users accounts with separate access for each website (similar to a dedicated hosting account). It also supports reseller accounts, enabling users to create their own hosting packages.
Another unique feature is CyberPanel’s support for CloudLinux OS, which enhances security between accounts on the server and prevents privilege escalation attacks through Local Attack methods.
Moreover, CloudLinux allows each account to use multiple PHP versions for different websites through the CageFS technology, which provides each account with a separate virtualized partition with unique configurations.
The first drawback of CyberPanel is that due to its use of OpenLiteSpeed, it may require some configuration adjustments to ensure optimal performance for websites like WordPress. The second drawback is that certain operations are not very “smart,” such as having to restart the LiteSpeed service when changing the .htaccess configuration. Finally, it may encounter minor errors when updating to newer versions.
In summary, CyberPanel is suitable if you need a free control panel with diverse permission mechanisms to grant multiple users access to collaborative work and want to utilize OpenLiteSpeed effectively.
Refer to the CyberPanel guide at AZDIGI.
CWP (CentOS Web Panel) – 7/10 rating
If you are still not satisfied with the features provided by the above two free control panels, you can try using CWP. But why does CWP here only receive a rating of 7 points? Of course, everything has its reasons, and AZDIGI will help you understand more about CWP.
CWP can be considered the oldest control panel in this article because the CWP tutorial on thachpham.com was published in 2014. Up to now, CWP has been widely used, even some cheap Web Hosting service providers use CWP as a control panel for their customers.
The reason why CWP is widely used is that it supports many features and third-party software like paid control panels such as integrating LiteSpeed Webserver Enterprise (not OpenLiteSpeed), CloudLinux, Softaculous, Varnish Cache, FFMPEG, ShoutCast, and a powerful user permission system.
One advantage of CWP is that it allows you to switch web server types with just a click. You can choose to use NGINX Proxy + Apache + PHP, NGINX + PHP-FPM, NGINX + PHP-FPM + Varnish, and more.
In addition, CWP can turn your VPS into not only a web server but also an Email Server with professional email support features, as well as a DNS server.
However, the drawback of CWP is that it is quite heavy and a bit cumbersome due to its diverse features. And most importantly, the prominent features mentioned above of CWP mostly require the use of its paid version to be able to use them.
But if you don’t mind paying a small amount for your VPS, you can use CWPPRO for only $12/year, and if you want your website to run faster, you can use the LiteSpeed Webserver Enterprise version for an additional price starting from $10/month.
That is why I mentioned earlier that if you are not satisfied with aaPanel or CyberPanel, you can try CWP, provided that you pay to use CWPPRO.
Refer to the CWP guide at AZDIGI.
Conclusion
In fact, there are many free control panels for Linux VPS available today, both new and old. However, in this article, AZDIGI only mentioned the three most popular free control panel options for your reference, and I think these three choices are sufficient for free needs.
If you want to learn more about other control panels, you can check out AZDIGI’s tutorials on control panels at: https://huongdan.azdigi.com/control-panel/.
