The web hosting industry is a crowded place, and with such tough competition from companies of all shapes and sizes, it’s hard to come up with something unique. However, that didn’t stop us from creating Softxaa HostPanel – an all-in-one web hosting control panel that helps you manage your entire hosting account without any additional cost.
What is Softxaa HostPanel?
Softxaa HostPanel is our in-house made web hosting management system that lets you control every aspect of your hosting account. It is available completely free of charge to all clients who choose one of our managed cloud hosting solutions or managed VPS hosting solutions, and although it is not the first control panel of its kind, it comes with some great and unique features that help you manage your Softxaa account. Fast, easy, and secure.
For website administrators, Softxaa HostPanel is an easy way to perform a variety of tasks, including:
- Creating & Managing subdomains.
- Adding addon domains.
- Manage DNS settings.
- Creating & managing FTP accounts.
- Uploading & managing files.
- Creating & restoring backups.
- Creating & managing email accounts.
- Managing MySQL databases.
- Installing SSL certificates.
- Installing & configuring CMS.
- Creating & configuring cron jobs
Those Users who choose one of our managed VPS solutions can control their entire server through HostPanel’s interface: they can:
- Monitor their virtual server’s health
Get stats on CPU, RAM, and disk space usage. - Create, suspend, & terminate users’ accounts.
- Manage disk quotas, usernames, and main domains for individual accounts
By default, the HostPanel login URL can be found at https://[yourdomain]/hostpanel. What you see when you sign in depends on the credentials you’re using. If you use the username and password for your root server, you’ll see HostPanel’s server administrator tools. On the other hand, if you want to manage a website, you need to use the credentials for the account associated with that website.
Using HostPanel to manage websites:
A few years ago, people realized that website administration didn’t have to be difficult, and since then, we’ve seen many innovations that have allowed less tech-savvy users to establish their Internet presence. Hostpanel is proof that maintaining a website can be easier than you might think.
After you log in, you can immediately see general information about your hosting account and current resource usage. Different tools are grouped in HostPanels also you can rearrange them.
There are also plenty of help boxes that give information about what you’re looking at.
Managing your domains with Softxaa HostPanel:
A website cannot function without a domain name. After you activate your web hosting account, you will receive a welcome email from Softxaa with instructions on which nameservers you need to point your domain(s). Once you’ve done that, you can use HostPanel to make sure your visitors have access to the correct website. With HostPanel, you can host multiple websites on a single account.
Your Softxaa hosting account is associated with a single main domain name, but you can add multiple domains and host different websites under them based on your hosting plan quota. All you need to do is open the Addon Domain tool, enter the domain name, and point it to a directory within the root folder of your account. Then, you need to make sure that the correct content is stored in the specified directory and that the addon domain’s nameservers are set correctly.
HostPanel helps you create subdomains for your main domain name and your addon domain. With the help of HostPanel, you can create different segments of your website like portal.yourdomain.com, etc., and keep the structure well organized.
Thanks to HostPanel’s redirects tool, you can set up and manage permanent and temporary redirects for your domains and URLs without editing the .htaccess file.
With the help of the DNS Editor tool, you can further control what users see when they enter your domains in their web browser. The A, MX, CNAME, and TXT records you add through it let you point visitors of your domains and subdomains to specific IPs and help you make sure your emails arrive wherever you want them to.
Managing emails with HostPanel:
One of the first things people do after launching their websites is to configure the email inboxes associated with their domain, and it’s not that surprising. After all, regardless of whether you are running a small personal website or an online business, you must ensure that users can reach you.
By clicking Email Accounts, you will be able to create and manage all mailboxes associated with your domain name. Creating a new inbox is as easy as choosing a username and a password, and you can manage them later from the same place.
HostPanel’s Autoresponder, forwarder, and default address features allow you to configure different ways to handle emails. Those who are using third-party email services need to set their mail exchanger to “remote” through the mail root tool.
Setting up your domain-based email to work with Gmail takes no more than a few clicks If you decide to keep your communications on Softxaa’s servers, you could do worse than having the SpamAssassin feature reduce the amount of spam that reaches your inbox.
You can also set up your custom filters that will discard messages you don’t want to see.
Managing files with HostPanel:
HostPanel’s File Manager is probably the easiest, most intuitive way to manage your website files. Uploading files is a drag-and-drop process, and downloading them isn’t too difficult. You can create new folders, change permissions, and even edit files on the spot. If you need to process large amounts of data, however, you’re better off using FTP.
With HostPanel, you can create as many FTP accounts as you like and manage your website data with your favorite FTP client. Meanwhile, the Backup and Restore tools in HostPanel’s Files section help you fix any problems that you may encounter. Through the files section, you can also get detailed statistics on how much disk space you’re using.
Managing databases with HostPanel:
An FTP account or a web-based interface will enough to manage static websites for many years. Modern online projects tend to be much more complex, however, and in addition to simple files, they also need databases to function properly. Thankfully, HostPanel can simplify the process of managing all these things again.
With the help of the MySQL database tool in the Databases section of HostPanel, you can create new MySQL databases, set up new user accounts to manage them, and set all permissions for the individual accounts and databases.
The actual database management is done via phpMyAdmin – a free, open-source administrator tool for MySQL and MariaDB databases. Its usability has made phpMyAdmin extremely popular with users and hosting companies, which is why it is integrated into HostPanel.
Additional tools
HostPanel can be as useful for technically advanced users as it is for beginners. For example, if you want to create a new WordPress website, our own Softxaa WordPress Manager is extremely useful. It allows them to install the world’s most popular CMS and enable the all-important automatic updates with no more than a few clicks.
Once everything is up and running, Softxaa WordPress Manager allows users to enable a security feature called Security Lock, which ensures that even if hackers manage to break in, they can’t tamper with website files.
If you don’t want to use WordPress, you can use Softaculous to set up other popular CMS or applications with no more than a few clicks.
Even less experienced website administrators will be happy to know that securing connections between websites and end users is not as difficult or expensive as it used to be. In fact, with HostPanel’s SSL certificate tool, you can configure your website to run over HTTPS. If you don’t have an SSL certificate of your own, HostPanel will automatically install and configure one within 24 hours of pointing your domain to the correct name server.
Meanwhile, the more technically advanced users can use HostPanel to create cron jobs, select the correct PHP version, or edit the PHP.ini file.
Using HostPanel to manage a cloud VPS
The world is moving towards cloud hosting at a very fast rate. The costs of this type of hosting are not as high as they used to be, and the improved scalability along with the rest of the other benefits make traditional hosting solutions unsuitable for most modern websites. Some people are afraid to use VPS hosting because they think that it requires too much technical knowledge to manage an entire server. But this is not the reality, if you purchase Managed Cloud VPS hosting from Softxaa, you will realize that what you thought is not true at all.
Our managed VPS hosting solutions come with the pre-installed operating system and everything needed to run a website. And if you need any assistance, our technical support team is always ready to help you out. Last, but by no means least, you get free access to the Softxaa HostPanel admin interface and all the tools you need to control your virtual server.
The home page of HostPanel’s admin interface serves as a dashboard. With this, you’ll get a live feed of how many server resources you’re currently using, and a list of all the accounts currently set up on your VPS. Server administrator tools are available in the left-hand panel of the screen, and if you’re struggling to find what you’re looking for, you can use the search functionality.
Managing your virtual server with HostPanel
The first set of features revolves around managing your virtual server. In the Server Information box, you can get a more detailed feed of how your server is being used. Again, you can see what portion of your server’s resources are being used right now, but you’ll also get more details pictures, including information on the type of operating system it runs on.
Through the server settings section, you can control two-factor authentication and captcha for different user groups and increase your server security level, and the branding and package sections allow resellers to grow their hosting business efficiently.
The HostPanel’s Server Status section gives you detailed information about all the services currently running on your VPS, and if there is a problem, you can restart your server from the Restart Services section. If that doesn’t work, you can reboot the entire system with the Restart Server tool. The Resource Usage section gives you detailed statistics on how much load you’re putting on your server,
If more than one person needs to manage your server, you can add additional admin accounts, and you can use API tokens to integrate HostPanel with other third-party products and applications.
Managing user accounts with HostPanel
HostPanel’s accounts Management section lets you control who can access your virtual server and how much. Creating a new user account is as simple as entering the account’s main domain name, choosing a username and password for them, and setting limits on disk space, inodes, databases, addon domains, and email accounts.
All user accounts you create are available in the Account Management section, and you have plenty of other options for managing them. You can change their usernames, passwords, and main domains, you can let them access their data via SSH, and you can also modify their allocated server resources.
If the need arises, you can suspend, unsuspend and terminate the user account with no more than a few clicks. HostPanel allows you to see a list of all SQL services currently running on your VPS. You can control the Softaculus license of your VPS through HostPanel’s admin interface and you can change the web server for better performance.
Conclusion
The Internet has changed a lot over the years. Websites are now much larger and more complex than ever before, and they are no longer created exclusively by computer experts. The challenge of ensuring that they can all be reliably hosted and controlled by less experienced users is huge, but we can proudly say that HostPanel proves that nothing is impossible.
