Parallels Plesk Panel 10 Published: Oct 20, 2010

• Rating

  5/5

Plesk Panel 10 is the latest refinement in hosting automation control panels from Parallels. This new version of Plesk has features designed to help providers boost their bottom line by improving services to their customers. The focus is on flexibility and ease-of-use.

Plesk Panel is a collection of tools to automate web hosting. It includes tools to manage customer accounts, handle billing, and offer customers a range of small-business applications. The system performs a number of web hosting tasks.

Hosting packages can be defined within service plans. Multiple plans can be established to make it easy to offer different levels of service. Add-on packages can be created to allow customers to select hosting options for their specific needs. Customer accounts are handled as subscriptions, and each customer may have multiple subscriptions. This lets customers select the options that best suit their business models and budgets.

For Customers

Subscriptions also enable the customer to run more than one site, including both domains and subdomains. The subscription is a hosting unit that has resources and services assigned to it. This helps to control resource usage and customer cost. Since each customer can have multiple subscriptions, businesses that use many domains can compartmentalize them by type or line of business.

Site and domain management is handled through an easy to use control panel. It gives access to full range of management tools for everything from statistics to applications to DNS settings. It includes access to Sitebuilder, to help customers get their sites up and running.

There are other features to make life easier for hosting service customers. The user interface has been improved. The new control panel is simpler to use and much more attractive. Customers can add auxiliary users who can also access the control panel. FTP services now include multiple accounts. This allows customers to control FTP access within a subscription without being limited to a single user.

For Providers

Admins will appreciate the new Health Monitor. This provides information about server health, to assist with troubleshooting.

Business tools are also integrated into the control panel. This includes Business Storefront, invoicing, payments and accounting. It can also handle SSL certificates and domain registration. Admins can have access to business information about customers. This integrated access improves customer service and eliminates the need to get customer information from other sources.

An additional benefit is the opportunity to offers small-business customers additional software services through the Parallel Partners Storefront. This is a great benefit to club services providers. Parallels handles set up, management, and all other aspects as part of a revenue-sharing model. This is an easy way to monetize customers without the high cost of development. Since Parallels handles the management aspects, services can be provided at an extremely low cost.

Conclusion

Plesk Control Panel 10 is a powerful and cost-effective system for managing Web hosting. It has tools to benefit both providers and customers and has the excellent support that Parallel provides. This is a strong contender in the competitive Web hosting software world.