What is it?

H-Sphere is a Web hosting Automation Control Panel for shared Web hosting services. It is a scalable multiserver Web hosting solution, meaning that it was designed to work on many servers and can be scaled by adding more Web, mail, database, and DNS servers without any downtime. It provides a simple Web interface that is easy to use and can be maintained from any computer with an Internet connection. H-Sphere runs only industry standard software. It is presented by Positive Software Corporation, now part of Parallels, the global leader in virtualization and automation software. Parallels software powers more than 130,000 servers and 600,000 desktops worldwide. The USA Headquarters of Parallels is located in Herndon, Virginia.

Who is it for?

The original version of H-Sphere has many advanced features and may be too complicated a solution for small hosting companies, especially as a single server installation. H-Sphere advantages are more obvious on the multi-server clusters prevalently used by larger companies. Now, however, the company has produced a new version. H-Sphere Single Server Edition is ideal for running a small hosting company, making all of the automation features of H-Sphere available for hosts with just one server. All hosting companies whether large or small can now reap the benefits of H-Sphere’s easy-to-use, secure, and reliable product.

Features

H-Sphere 3.0 has many advanced features and a sophisticated billing system to automate and improve Web hosting tasks. It includes a comprehensive built-in billing system with variety of payment methods, various hosting solutions, an electronic mail system with antivirus and antispam filtering and integrated WebMail, multiple user tools, integrated PHP/MySQL applications, and multilingual support. The scalable multiserver cluster allows different physical and logical servers to be managed from one control panel. More servers can be added at any time. H-Sphere offers private server solutions including virtual private servers and reseller allocated servers.

Private label resellers have access to a full-featured admin control panel, complete branding, and independent billing. The control panel is user-friendly, offering centralized control, intuitive plan wizards, an integrated support center, multiple skins and accounts for users, and a user-friendly invoice format. Complete automation is offered through automated customer signup and domain registration and the new H-Sphere installation wizard makes the whole process much simpler. H-Sphere follows a centralized model to offer the highest level of manageability. The data is stored in the centralized database and the control panel server dispatches commands to different servers. The Single Server Edition offers many of the same features, but is not available for every operating system. Additionally, because it is intended for single servers, it will not function with multiple servers and does not offer a dedicated server hosting feature. Both versions of H-Sphere are available for 30-day free trials.

Compatibility

H-Sphere is currently available for Linux, Unix and Windows environments and works with MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server databases. It is written in Java and works with any SQL-compliant database. The S.S.E. version is not yet available for Windows. For installation of H-Sphere to only one computer, the minimum requirements are at least Pentium III with 500MHz CPU and 512MB RAM. Full control of DNS, mail, Web and other hosting servers during installation and testing is necessary. H-Sphere can only be installed on public IPs.

Web Hosts that Offer H-Sphere