DotNetPanel 2?

LeaUK · 23rd December 2006

Is anyone using DotNetPanel 2 in a commercial environment and would like to comment on their exigencies? Would be much appreciated.

I've been running Plesk 8.1 for 4 weeks and love the GUI but the support is 'average to poor', their own forum support is poor, speed appears a potential issue (Especially under loading from several simultaneous users), no auto billing.

Don't like Helm 4 just for clunky interface reasons (maybe a bad decision and I'll backtrack latter), so hence my inquisitiveness about DNP2 (fast, billing incorporated, nice GUI etc, great forum support, attractive price, good potential).

Cheers
Lea

monaghan · 23rd December 2006

I've been running 1.5 for a while, I'm hoping to get a bit of time to upgrade it to v2 over the next week or so.

Support via their forum is generally good and fast and they seem to welcome new users to the panel. Most of my Windows customers have not come from the traditional I "must have this control panel" background, however anyone of this mentality could potentially be put off as they may expect Helm or Plesk.

othellotech · 23rd December 2006

Quote:

Originally Posted by LeaUK2

I've been running Plesk 8.1 for 4 weeks and love the GUI but the support is 'average to poor', their own forum support is poor, speed appears a potential issue (Especially under loading from several simultaneous users), no auto billing.

In over 6 years of using Plesk, we've had to use support a total of *FOUR* times, and its always been fine - what is it you're doing that requires so much support ?

Speed - yes, on windows, the control panel itself is quite slow, which has never been that much of an issue, as no-one spends their day in the control panel.

Billing - the only control panel with adequate inbuilt billing is HSphere

LeaUK · 26th December 2006

othellotech

I understand your point re users not spending their life in a panel, but I probably will and certainly to begin with, as bear in mind that I'm still learning and do not posses years of experience with CPs unlike many others here.

This is also another justification for ensuring support is up to standard, for example within 4 weeks I raised 3 questions, one turns out to be a bug (failed to be reproduced at their end or understood) the other 2 was my lack of understanding. So in an attempt to support my 'customers' I too need prompt and accurate support. I'm willing to pay but response and quality is important. No point in receiving auto responses or emails within 24 hours that do not solve the issue.

Forum support is also important to me as of course a community of users prepared to help others will also endeavour to lower some maintenance costs - until experience is gained.

monaghan

Quote:

Most of my Windows customers have not come from the traditional I "must have this control panel" background, however anyone of this mentality could potentially be put off as they may expect Helm or Plesk.

This is encouraging, of course should I find significant demand for specific panels then I could run a VPS and Plesk & Helm alongside (and charge a suitable premium) - but I doubt it. DNP2 or Plesk 8.1 to be decided.

Many thanks to you both for your advice and guidance
Cheers - Lea

Cranky · 26th December 2006

We are a provider extremely reliant on Plesk and have used it since August 2001 - it's used exclusively across all our services (email, shared, reseller, VPS and dedicated) and we also provide support/consultancy to over 30 other Plesk providers. I would say on average my team raise 1 ticket per fortnight to report bugs, submit bug fixes, receive bug fixes and feature requests (although feature requests aren't usually tickets, and I wouldn't expect a fast reply to these). This is mostly because we must be running in excess of 40 different builds of Plesk (due to many of the servers not being ours, and merely other providers we support, our own systems are fairly standardised). On average, Plesk for Unix team respond to our tickets within a few hours, and Plesk for Win team within about two hours. I'm satisfied with the support they offer but I'm not sure if they give priority support to partners so maybe it's slower for others.

I like and recommend Plesk and SWsoft - they both have their weaknesses/problems but the strengths far outweigh them for my business needs.

Cranky · 26th December 2006

Regarding speed, they improved it a lot in recent builds of Plesk (7.6.1 and more in 8.1) for Windows if you have enough memory (I'd go for 256MB minimum on Windows, 512MB+ if possible). Linux has always been quite fast except on highly-loaded or low spec (<=128MB memory) systems.

LeaUK · 27th December 2006

Hi Cranky

Quote:

On average, Plesk for Unix team respond to our tickets within a few hours, and Plesk for Win team within about two hours. I'm satisfied with the support they offer but I'm not sure if they give priority support to partners so maybe it's slower for others.

I'm sure others have also reported similar excellent support and perhaps when one take out the 'paid' subscription things change but for the trial one-two days is what I received.

I too think Plesk 8.1 is excellent but as previously mentioned support is paramount for the inexperienced and unfortunately it has no affordable integrated billing.

Therefore maybe someone would be so kind and recommend a billing package - would be appreciated.

Cheers
Lea

internetod · 27th December 2006

Is ModernBill out of your price range?

Get's pretty good recommendations from many users on here. Not used it personally as we wrote our own system to interface with PLESK's EXPAND API.

Ths handles the billing for us.

LeaUK · 27th December 2006

Thanks for the tip, I'll take a look.

Regards
Lea

Edit

Pros
Appears Professional
Forum Support is active
affordable

Cons
According to random posts on the forum it appears Plesk 8.1 is not fully supported. Can't find any confirmation of 8.1 support on web site

Cranky · 27th December 2006

Plesk 8.1 API is backwards-compatible with 8.0. This means that some new features in 8.1 may not yet be supported, but all existing features are. I'm sure they'll add 8.1 support eventually and there's not a huge number of differences for end-users in 8.1.

LeaUK · 27th December 2006

That's positive news, thanks cranky. Might be worth the trial 30 day run now

Regards
Lea

Cranky · 27th December 2006

No problem. I don't know how viable this is for you, but maybe it's worth using a provider who can offer you Plesk support, rather than going via SWsoft themselves. A lot of dedicated server providers offer Plesk now. If you find a managed one they should have plenty of experience with Plesk so you don't need SWsoft support.

LeaUK · 27th December 2006

A good idea and has been suggested before, but I'm going from the ground up and most think I'm nuts, but a techie is a techie. At some point in the future I want to be in a position where I can offer 'unique' services for my 'customers' and so learning the hard way is a struggle, but for me first principles is often the best approach.

I have your 'number' re possible support in the future

Cranky · 27th December 2006

It doesn't necessarily have to stop you from learning, just means you have support behind you when it's needed.

LeaUK · 27th December 2006

Ah, but I wouldn't have my own hardware at minimal cost. Hardware = No 1 priority

Just configuring my DRAC4 card so it's rather exciting here at the moment - sorry, a little off topic....

Thanks for your support Cranky

Regards
Lea