Couple of quesions, evaluating usefulness

[dalu]

Before buying I have a couple of questions.

I'm trying to evaluate if the monthly fee is worth paying.
There are a couple of free web hosting management panels,
so I wonder if it's worth the 300-360€ / year.

I'm currently hosting with Froxlor. Small hosting service, 2 hands full of customers, mostly using the server for my old projects.
I'd like to start over in a professional way.
Dedicated database server, dedicated shared web hosting server.

Context: Web Host Pro (largest licence)

Well even with the 2 hands full of customers I find invoice management tiresome.
I'd like this to run semi or fully automated.

- Does Plesk have a billing module?
Does is create and send invoices automatically?
Does it check return receipts?
Is it able to track payments? If so from which banks/providers?
Which payment options are available?
Is it able to send invoices by snailmail using various snailmail services?
Does it have a yearly income/expense calculation?
Does it have reminders for unpaid invoices?

Next, I'd like to offer more than just php hosting.

- Can I host python, ruby, various other scripting languages, and which?

In context of PHP,
- Can I use php-fpm?
- Can I make nginx the default web server, not using apache at all?
- Can I use multiple php versions?
- How is a user's php environment isolated?
- Can I offer ssh to a user's environment and how safe is it?

- Similar questions regarding python, ruby etc.
Especially ssh

Context resource limits, quota.
- Can I set soft and hard limits on
-- disk usage, including database
-- outbound traffic
-- memory
-- requests / second (rate limit)

What about DoS DDoS protection?
- Can I rate limit requests from various sources?
- Does it recognize DDoS and provide counter-measures?

Databases
- Which database servers/software are supported?
- Which management software for mysql, pg, mongo is used?
- Can I use a dedicated mysql server on a private IP and is management included?
-- What about pg, mongodb?

Cache
- Are in memory caches supported?
- Which caching mechanisms are supported?
If nginx, is the cache module used?
Is varnish supported?
Is this toggable by user, domain?

DNS
I'd use the primary and secondary as DNS.
- Can i manage master/slave with Plesk?
- And resource records
- What about custom resource records?

Domains
I'm an EPAG reseller
- Does Plesk provide automated domain name registration and management?
- Which providers are supported? (Is EPAG supported, what about keyweb, others)

API
- Does Plesk have an exposed, authenticated API?
I'd like to provide automated registration, also domain name registration on a separate website and create customer accounts and allow them to register domain names, order webspace and so on.
- Once they're a customer, can they use Plesk to extend their webspace, automatically?
- Is a customer able to become a reseller, automatically (e.g. send request, manual confirmation)?

TOS
- Does Plesk have pre-defined templates for Terms of Use?
-- If so for which countries/languages?

Scaling
Say one server cluster is full
- Can I extend and manage a second cluster with Plesk and decide where new web spaces are assigned?
- Can I manage more than 1 cluster?
(A cluster is a web hosting server and database server combination, db sever on 2nd NIC by direct connection)

Performance
- What is your estimate, how many customers/domains could be handled by an E5-1650 with 128GB of DDR4 RAM? HDD, no SSD.

OS
- Is CentOS 7 supported?
-- Does it use cgroups for resource management, systemd units or does it just wrap old style init scripts?
- Does it manage OS updates?
-- Are updates automated?
--- Will I receive a summary/logs by mail?

That's all I can think of right now from the top of my head.

 

[custer]

Hi, dalu.

Thank you for your interest in Plesk. There are a lot of questions you have here, and many of them are already answered in our user documentation (http://www.odin.com/products/plesk/documentation/) and in Release Notes (http://download1.parallels.com/Ples...12.0-for-linux-installation-upgrade-info.html). Is there a particular reason you chose to ask these questions here instead of using our publicly available official sources (for example, they were difficult for you to find, documentation search doesn't work for you, or you wanted to hear the answers from Plesk users)?

 

[Sergey L]

Hi dalu,

Below are answers to your less-trivial questions. For the rest you can find answers in official docs easily

- Does Plesk have a billing module?

No, you better employ full-fledged billing system like WHMCs, which Plesk is integrated with.

Next, I'd like to offer more than just php hosting.
- Can I host python, ruby, various other scripting languages, and which?

Yes, you can. Though for for some you may need small extra effort - i.e.
- Ruby
- Python
- Node.JS
Not sure what else you meant.

- Can I use php-fpm?

In upcoming Plesk 12.5 - yes

- Can I make nginx the default web server, not using apache at all?

You can stop using Apache at all if you limit yourself to PHP and static files. You cannot uninstall Apache however

- Can I use multiple php versions?

You can

- How is a user's php environment isolated?

FastCGI and open_basedir in 12.0, also php-fpm in 12.5. Optionally chroot.

- Can I offer ssh to a user's environment and how safe is it?

You can. Safe as ssh itself.

- Can I set soft and hard limits on
-- disk usage, including database

Yes, as long as database server is local and hard quota enabled in your filesystem

-- outbound traffic

Yes, as long as you allow it.

-- memory

You can set memory limits as web server or scripting engine options

-- requests / second (rate limit)

Same as above + mod_bw may help

What about DoS DDoS protection?

fail2ban + mod_security integrated

- Can I use a dedicated mysql server on a private IP and is management included?

management included in scope of databases and database users

Cache
- Are in memory caches supported?
- Which caching mechanisms are supported?
If nginx, is the cache module used?

Is varnish supported?

No

- Can i manage master/slave with Plesk?

Yes, you can. See how to manage external slave DNS server

- Does Plesk provide automated domain name registration and management?

No, domain registration normally comes integrated into billing software, not in hosting panel. Check out whether WHMCs will support EPAG

- Does Plesk have an exposed, authenticated API?
I'd like to provide automated registration, also domain name registration on a separate website and create customer accounts and allow them to register domain names, order webspace and so on.

Yes, there is extensive XML API. Don;t forget to obtain "secret key" and don't pass your password back and forth unnecessarily.

- Once they're a customer, can they use Plesk to extend their webspace, automatically?

You can allow overuse of their limits if that is what you were asking

- Is a customer able to become a reseller, automatically (e.g. send request, manual confirmation)?

You can convert them into reseller

- Does Plesk have pre-defined templates for Terms of Use?

It is normally a part of billing/store solution. check out what WHMCs can offer you

Say one server cluster is full
- Can I extend and manage a second cluster with Plesk and decide where new web spaces are assigned?
- Can I manage more than 1 cluster?
(A cluster is a web hosting server and database server combination, db sever on 2nd NIC by direct connection)

for this you shall explore Parallels Plesk Automation product

- What is your estimate, how many customers/domains could be handled by an E5-1650 with 128GB of DDR4 RAM? HDD, no SSD.

It completely depends on the type of domains and customers you are going to host. In some cases it may be insufficient for one domain.
In some other cases - up to for 4000 domains can be reached per our observations.

- Is CentOS 7 supported?

yes

-- Does it use cgroups for resource management, systemd units or does it just wrap old style init scripts?

No, but you can run CloudLinux instead with granular management of resources per user

- Does it manage OS updates?

some updates will come automatically because of dependencies but overall you remain responsible for keeping OS up2date

-- Are updates automated?

weekly/bi-weekly automated updates of Plesk (unless you disable them)

--- Will I receive a summary/logs by mail?

logs remin on the server. You can download them or explore there.

Hope it helped to some degree