H-Sphere

adamsmith · 16th February 2004

I'd be interested in hearing other hosts' experiences with H-Sphere, good or bad.

Adam.

markcastle · 16th February 2004

Cue Karl....

dch · 17th February 2004

Hi,

We've been using H-Sphere for almost 2 years now, and love it - the product is great, although I think it can take a little getting used to

PSoft and their support is also very good, they have recently started a nomination/voting - license holders can ask for new features and vote for them etc

We have no plans on moving away at all

If there is anything more specific you'd like to know just let me know!

Cheers,
Sean

dch · 17th February 2004

Actually although you may think it would be biased I do think their forum is very fair, so you could take a look @ http://www.forum.psoft.net/

adamsmith · 17th February 2004

Thanks guys for your responses.

I'm mostly interested in the following:

Security - Presumably if the 'control' server is compromised, you're going to have serious problems.

Stability - How well tested is it (compared to cPanel for instance)?

Integration - How well does it integrate with Worldpay, especially with regard to recurring payments?

dch · 17th February 2004

:: Security - Presumably if the 'control' server is compromised, you're going to have serious problems.

Basically yes - although as recommended you do not have web etc setup on the same box, ie no client user accounts etc - our CP box just runs the CP and DNS2

:: Stability - How well tested is it (compared to cPanel for instance)?

I have no experience with cPanel so cannot comment on that (Cue Karl

) But H-Sphere is extremely stable.

:: Integration - How well does it integrate with Worldpay, especially with regard to recurring payments?

Actually I have to say here, not as well as you would hope, we currently use WP with H-Sphere, but it does not take advantage of FuturePay at all, for recurring payments an email invoice is sent out with a link in that the client must manually make payment from (via WorldPay) This is actually one of the main reasons we are just about to move away from WP

Karl · 17th February 2004

Hi,

We've been using HSphere for over 2 years now, since September 2001.

Security - Run the CP server on it's own box and keep it updated and you should be fine, especially with the major security overhaul in 2.4.

Stability - Very rarely have any stability problems, it's been very stable for over 12 months now, like CPanel it went through a rough patch (Although not as big) and has come out of the other side.

WP - Can't really say as we don't use WorldPay.

adamsmith · 17th February 2004

Sounds pretty good then

. I like cPanel as a product/concept but there are just too many little niggles at the moment. For instance, last week, one of our resellers creates a domain domain..com. cPanel didn't pick up the error and of course it broke the syntax and Bind went down. It's not the kind of thing you want to happen on a production server.

Swordfish · 25th April 2004

I am also interested in H-Sphere.

I notice they only list two UK based payment gateways which are supported - Securetrading and Worldpay. Is it possible to use any others such as Protx?

Does it work with Solaris at all ? Our DNS servers run on Solaris 8.

Karl · 25th April 2004

Hi,

1) It supports ePDQ and ProtX as well. There are roughly 30 different gateways supported in v2.4

2) Nope, it used to support Solaris for DNS servers, as we used to run Solaris 8 on a pair of Netra X1, but support was dropped some time back now.

If you need to know any more, just give me a buzz.

Thank you,

dch · 26th April 2004

We use H-Sphere and currently use WorldPay - we are eagerly waiting for 2.4 to be released, which if there are no problems, has a scheduled release of May 4th I believe - we can swap over to Protx then - PSoft actually used our Protx account for the testing and had no problems so it is definitely in the release

Cranky · 27th April 2004

For protx does H-Sphere store the card details for admin viewing?

dch · 27th April 2004

Card details are stored (not CV2) - from v2.4 they are PGP encrypted - I'm not sure if you can view the details or not via the admin layer - I would think it would be possible, not sure though.

Karl · 27th April 2004

If HSphere stores the details, then it lets the admin view them, unless they've added something in to the mix with the card encryption scheme we came up with.

dch · 28th April 2004

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karl

If HSphere stores the details, then it lets the admin view them, unless they've added something in to the mix with the card encryption scheme we came up with.

Yes - I just mean I'm not sure if you can see the details via the admin layer on the control panel - like now I don't think you can, not sure though (unless you have added in your own template etc for viewing them) But you can always access it yourself via the db directly