When it comes to control panels, there are many letters we are familiar with or may have worked with: Plesk, CPanel, Direct Admin, NetPanel, Website Panel, and other tools for hosting.
Each of these panels offers features many have in common, but there are differences.
We recommend you read this article if you are also looking for a good hosting control panel. In it, we aim to introduce a practical and excellent tool for hosting management. This Control Panel is software that you will enjoy working with.
What is Direct Admin?
Direct Admin is control panel software. Its graphical user interface makes it easy to manage your site and host.
This control panel and C Panel are both good choices for Linux sites; However, each has several advantages and disadvantages that you should be aware of before choosing.
What are the benefits of Direct Admin?
This Control Panel has four significant advantages, making it a serious competitor to C Panel and Plesk.
1- Cost-effectiveness
- It costs less than other host control panels, but this price has not affected its performance. Despite the low price, it has high security and excellent default features.
2- Optimal speed
- It is for to be fast and compact. Due to this small size, many hosts will not be occupied, and you will have more control over the available resources.
3- Attractive and simple user interface
- The user panel is divided into six sections:
Account management, email management, settings, information display, additional settings, and support.
With this simple menu, you can easily access the most used sections.
What are the disadvantages of Direct Admin?
In addition to all its benefits, it also has a few minor issues. Let’s examine these problems.
1- Incompatibility with Windows hosting
- It is a great choice for managing Linux hosts, but it is not compatible with Windows hosting. If you are using Windows hosting, you can use the Plesk control panel.
2- No third-party plugins
- There are several plugins for C-panel and Plesk. Installing these plugins on the panel (as needed) will upgrade its capabilities. However, the Direct Admin Control Panel does not have a special plugin, and you have to pay for its development to add the desired feature to the control panel.
3- User Guidance
- The good thing about C Panel is that it is used by many active users worldwide. That’s why there is a large community where anyone can provide training, ask questions, and get answers quickly.
Unfortunately, Direct Admin users are not very familiar with C-Panel, which means that you may need to spend more time finding the answers to your questions.
Of course, this should not worry you too much; if you have a problem, you can get support from a hosting company.
Now that you know Direct Admin’s advantages and disadvantages, let’s examine its features and see if they work for us.
Introduction of different sections of Direct Admin
A little higher, we mentioned the features of Direct Admin very briefly. Now, we want to go into a little more detail and examine each section.
Direct Admin is divided into the following three general sections:
- Account Manager: This panel deals with domain settings, site statistics, DNS management, FTP management, backup, database management, and more.
- E-mail Management: Using this section, you can monitor email accounts.
View and manage the list of emails and respond to them automatically through this section.
In addition, the emails you create in Direct Admin can be accessed and used through the Direct Admin user interface, and you can manage them using other email software (such as Outlook).
Direct Admin also protects against spam and other content filters.
- Advanced Features: This section is for making advanced settings in Direct Admin. Users can view and manage server information from this section.
For example, users can install SSL certificates and Perl modules from this section.
This section also handles PHPinfo management, Crinjob, MIME type permissions, Apache handling Redirect sites, and Domain Pointer.
- System Info & Files: This menu allows you to display system modules and information, manage files, display system error lists, change language and site views, and manage bandwidth.
- Extra Features: Extra Features are accessible through webmail using Squirrelmail and Roundcube software and include access to direct admin databases.
- Support & Help: The Help & Support section is responsible for Support & Help.
Important features of Direct Admin for you
To see if Direct Admin is right for you, let’s take a step forward and examine its important and useful features.
Direct Admin features are divided into three levels: representatives, administrators, and users.
Representatives level facilities
- Account management (including creating, modifying, and deleting accounts)
- Create a package for users
- View total space usage statistics for each user individually
- Sort statistics based on each user account
- Messaging system for users (including sending messages to all users through the ticket support system)
- Customizable skins and templates for agents
- Assign IP address and manage IPs
- Personalization of NSs (Name Servers)
Manager level facilities
- Create and control accounts for multiple administrators and users + determine the necessary permissions for them.
- Customize different packages, such as mailing lists, and send them
- DNS management includes creating, editing, and deleting records for each DNS record stored on the system
- Manage IP addresses and assign IPs
- Management and detailed statistics of system services
User level features
- Manage various sections such as emails, TP FTP, DNS, subdomains, databases, error pages, and Cronjobs.
- Backup section settings
- View user statistics
- Select PHP version
- Certificate installation
- Simple file manager environment
Conclusion
In this article, from the series of educational materials of Iran Server, we tried to give you the necessary information about knowing and using Direct Admin. Now, you can decide to use the Direct Admin Control Panel or go to other control panels.