I work at a hosting company in the states. I’ve recently ran demos of webmin/virtualmin on a test server and we are quite impressed.
Alas, I have a few lingering questions regarding the professional package before we commit to anything.
Billing -
The pricing says $499/unlimited domains per server. Fair enough, a bit higher than Plesk (our current panel vendor), but I hate Plesk so not really an issue. Just to be sure, it says $166/year after the first year, am I correct in assuming that is again per server/unlimited domains?
install Scripts -
Methinks this is similar to the installers available with cPanel and Plesk…anything else under the surface of this?
Developer API -
Are there any limitations in the GPL version that are lifted with the pro version? We have the flexibility with Plesk to do almost anything via the terminal API that we can do with the GUI. I just want to make sure functionality would not be sacrificed here.
Any input would be appreciated, just trying to line up my proverbial ducks before I submit an official recommendation to management!
Re: Recurring license cost: Yeah those would again be per server for unlimited domains.
Re: Install scripts: In the Pro version, you have a function to install a great number of web software (blogs, CMS, wikis and such) with just a few mouseclicks. Basically Virtualmin downloads the software package for you, unpacks it, pulls potential necessary dependencies, creates databases, runs initial setup steps and you end up with a mostly finished installation. Saves you a lot of time if you need to install stuff for your customers regularly.
Yup, as usual, Locutus is right on the money! Just a few additional thoughts –
The API in the GPL version of Virtualmin is nearly the same as that in Pro – the difference is that the Pro version has access to some Pro-only features. For example, the Pro version would allow you to create Resellers, which the GPL version doesn’t have. You can also install the various Install Scripts from the API… the GPL version comes with just a handful of Install Scripts, where the Pro version comes with over 100.
You can see the full list of Install Scripts that come with Virtualmin Pro here:
The install scripts aren’t really a big deal to me - we have sysadmins and programmers on staff who can set these up in their sleep.
The reseller accounts are debatable…we have a limited number of these, and most are hosted on our VPS servers where we would be using virtualmin for our shared servers. Time to talk it over with the crew and see what everyone thinks!
The Pro version has some additional “commodities”, like a function in the GUI to apply changes to / delete multiple virtual servers / email users at once.
Also, with the Pro version you can file support requests which will be processed by the Virtualmin team, as opposed to the community forum here (albeit Eric from Virtualmin voluntarily replies to most requests in the forum as well).