SPanel Review: Everything You Need to Know About the Platform

Deciding which control panel you’re going to use to manage your website (s) is just as important as choosing the right web host. Via your control panel, you’ll make sure that everything is updated, add content, and enrich your website with added functionalities. Thus, it’s important that the panel you get is easy to use and offers all the features you need.

Out of many efficient control panels, a few stand out as the best, including SPanel. In this SPanel review, we’ll go through how the platform works, how much it costs, the tools and features it offers, and more so that you can decide whether SPanel is the right choice for you among all the other viable options. So, without further ado, let’s see what SPanel has to offer!

What Is SPanel?

SPanel is an all-in-one cloud management platform that allows you to manage your server, even if you have no prior experience doing so. It was developed by ScalaHosting, a great web hosting provider that knows exactly what website owners need to manage their sites successfully and easily.

Since it was created and is provided by ScalaHosting, many think that you can only use SPanel if you get web hosting from Scala, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Namely, you can get SPanel as a standalone service and use it with some of the best cloud hosting providers on the market, including the following:

• AWS (Amazon Web Services);
• DigitalOcean;
• Google Cloud Platform;
• Alibaba Cloud;
• Contabo;
• Azure;
• Hetzner;
• OVH.com;
• Vultr;
• Linode.

You can also use SPanel on web servers like OpenLiteSpeed, Nginx, and LiteSpeed Web Server.

Even if you already have a website and are using a different control panel but want to switch to SPanel, you can easily do so, as you’ll get free migration from ScalaHosting’s experts. Also, your website won’t experience any downtime while it gets migrated, which is great.

In addition, you’ll receive 24/7/365 technical support, full server management, and end-user live chat support by using SPanel as your control panel. The feature that many users like most about SPanel is that it comes with automatic software updates, which saves you a tremendous amount of time that you can spend on other, more important tasks.

Now that you know what SPanel is and where you can use it, let’s see how much it would cost you to do so.

Pricing

There are three fully managed and three self-managed SPanel pricing plans you can choose from, and all of them are eligible for 30-day money-back guarantees. So, you can try out the control panel risk-free for 30 days and request a full refund if you don’t like its services.

All plans come with every feature that SPanel offers, with the difference between them being the number of accounts you can use SPanel on. The prices for the fully managed plans are as follows:

• SPanel One from $19.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 5 accounts.
• SPanel Pro from $24.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 30 accounts.
• SPanel Agency from $39.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 100 accounts.

All fully managed SPanel plans come with all SPanel features, 24/7 full server management from A to Z, free website migration, free installation & server configuration, and a free Softaculous one-click installer.

You can also get self-managed SPanel, which will cost you:

• SPanel Entry from $9.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 5 accounts.
• SPanel Pro from $14.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 30 accounts.
• SPanel Agency from $19.95/month for hosting unlimited domains in 100 accounts.

All self-managed SPanel plans come with all SPanel features, 24/7 SPanel support, and free installation.

How Does SPanel Work?

You can integrate SPanel into any website and virtual or private server. Once you do, your server will be managed by SPanel, and you’ll have access to the SPanel interface, where you can complete tasks and manage your server and website(s).

The SPanel interface consists of two main elements – the admin interface and the user interface. Let’s explore both in detail.

Admin Interface

When you open SPanel’s admin interface, you’ll be met with a homepage. Here, you can view all the submenus that SPanel offers, as well as a list of all your accounts and domains, their IPs, usernames, quota, disk usage, inodes, packages, and setup dates. The homepage also shows you your system load, memory usage, disk usage, and IP reputation.

The admin interface in SPanel is reserved for users who have administrative access to the SPanel account, usually the account owners. It allows you to manage your server as a whole, along with all the domains and accounts linked to your specific SPanel account.

User Interface

The user interface is what all people who use the SPanel account as guests (not administrators) will get. It allows users to manage specific accounts, make account-level changes, and perform account-related tasks. The user interface corresponds to one domain or one website, allowing you to manage that specific site individually. So, it’s not meant for server management but website management.

Like the admin interface, the user interface also starts off with a homepage that lists all the tasks you can perform on your website or domain. It also shows general information about the SPanel account, as well as resource usage for the specific domain the account corresponds to.

Admin Interface Tools and Features

Now that you know what the purpose of the admin interface is, let’s explore what you can do with it. First things first, the admin interface in SPanel allows you to create new accounts. To do that, click on the “Create a New Account” button in the “Accounts Management” section, which is located on the left side of your admin interface. Once you do, you need to fill out all the information required on your screen and click on “Create Account” at the bottom when you’re done.

Next, the admin interface allows you to manage all your accounts. You can do this by clicking the “Manage Accounts” button in the “Accounts Management” section of SPanel. Here, you can view all your active and suspended accounts and do a wide range of tasks for each one.

You can also view server information via your admin interface. To do that, click on the “Server Information” button in the “Server Management” section. Here, you’ll see system information, processor Information, memory usage, disk usage, and the IP reputation of your server.

SPanel’s admin interface also enables you to check your server status. You can do that by clicking the “Server Status” option in the “Server Management” section of your interface. You’ll see the status of your services, system information, and disk information.

You can also restart services via your admin interface. To find this option, click on the “Restart Service” button in the “Server Management” section. You can restart your web server, email server, FTP server, and all other server-related services that you use.

In addition, you can restart your whole server by clicking on the “Restart Server” button in the “Server Management” section.

The admin interface also gives you access to a web server manager, which you can access by clicking the “Web Server Manager” button in the “Software” section.

Other features and tools that you’ll get from the SPanel admin interface include the following:

• Server Information;
• Branding;
• Packages;
• Manage Admin Users;
• Manage API Tokens;
• Resource Usage;
• List Suspended Accounts;
• Manage SSH Access;
• Software Management;
• Management of other services running on your server.

User Interface Tools and Features

The SPanel user interface allows you to complete a wide range of website and domain-related tasks. One of those tasks includes managing your email. Email management tools are usually located at the top of your user interface, and here you can manage existing email accounts, create new email accounts, manage email forwarders, set a mail route, set a default address, log in to your webmail, add new autoresponders and create new ones, enable/disable SpamAssassin, add new email filters and manage the existing ones, and track email delivery.

You can also manage the databases linked to your website/domain, including MySQL databases and PhpMyAdmin.

Next, you can manage your settings via the SPanel user interface. More specifically, you can manage existing users and add new ones, change your password, change the language of your account, change your contact email, manage 2FA, and request features.

You’ll also be able to manage your domains, which involves modifying existing domains and creating addon domains, managing existing and creating new subdomains, editing records with a DNS editor, managing existing and adding new redirects, and monitoring all the websites linked to your SPanel account.

The SPanel user interface also offers great file management tools and features, including managing existing and adding new FTP accounts, managing and restoring backups, a file manager where you can complete different file-related tasks, and managing file and folder disk usage.

Other tools and features that the SPanel user interface offers include the following:

• SSL Certificates;
• Cron Jobs;
• PHP Manager;
• Resource Usage;
• Web Statistics;
• Cloudflare;
• SSH Terminal;
• SShield;
• WordPress Manager;
• Joomla Manager;
• NodeJS Manager;
• Softaculous.

Pros & Cons

Some of the advantages that you’ll enjoy by using SPanel include the following:

On the other hand, here are some of the disadvantages you’ll face by using SPanel:

Conclusion

All in all, SPanel is an excellent all-in-one cloud management platform that gives you all the features and tools you need to manage your server and websites. It’s super easy to use, making it ideal for beginners, but it also comes with advanced features that more experienced users might need.

Also, SPanel offers superb customer support and fast performance and is a worthy contender for cPanel and other popular control panels. Sure, it does come with its limitations, but the pros outweigh the cons greatly. So, don’t hesitate to try it out risk-free for 30 days and see for yourself what it offers.