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List of non SolusVM/WHMCS providers
Hi,
basically i hate both for the following reasons:
1) They are like "the starter kit for the young provider". It seems like everyone think that to enter the lowend business they have to buy a server, get their SolusVM/WHMCS license (when not just download a nulled copy) and start overselling at low prices.
I know there are also serious providers like prometeus (which i used too) that uses that crappy software, but how many others are there?
2) Horrible security. Anyone who knows PHP also knows that passing unescaped input to exec() or to a sql query is one of the worst idea possible. I wonder how they can still seriously sell their code after that.
Also WHMCS in the past had serious flaws too and while i do my best to keep my boxes secure it seems stupid to me getting hacked trough my upstream provider, which should be even better protected than me.
3) Everything looks the same. WHMCS and SolusVM are in hosting what the twitter boostrap is for web design. Seems like veryone have just to upload their own copy and it's done.
I know design it's not so important, but hey, you invest a lot of money in servers, you can spend some bucks for a good theme or a good designer. Marketing should be important too.
4) SolusVM is limitated. I mostly use KVM and for example, i would like to use my custom ISO but i never can.
5) SolusVM VNC does not use an encrypted connection because it's "for emergency only".
Since i need to do full disk encryption on my boxes sounds crazy to me to send the key cleartext.
So every time i have to configure Dropbear SSH to start before boot, which often is a pain and stupid too because i reboot a bex less than one every six months.
6) Please correct me if i am wrong but with SolusVM is impossible to manage and buy dedicated subnet if you own multiple vps.
7) SolusVM is IonCube encoded, so a provider theorically can't even check its security on his own.
So, let's start with the list. (some have the same lack of features as SolusVM like the possibility of custom ISO)
EDIT: After some of you pointed out some of them use WHCMS. So assume that this is list is for just SolusVM-free providers.
buyvm.net
edis.at
ovh.com
digitalocean.com
gridlane.com (which is not in LEB prices but still affordable)
Any other else?
Comments
A lot of providers here use WHMCS. There just aren't too many good alternatives (paid or free) for it. Panels, on the other hand...
BuyVM uses Stallion.
BlueVM is switching over to Feathur (KVM will move once Feathur supports KVM).
That's all I can think of off the top of my head.
Try swiftway. They make you send your order and personal details via email, and then you should send the payment directly to their paypal address. No WHMCS involved.
I'm just trolling, you know
Doesn't BuyVM use WHMCS?
And EDIS's billing system is terrible. I don't think it's an improvement over WHMCS.
Cloud3k/RockMyWeb/VirtuallyDedicated/whatever-else-they're-called use their own billing system too.
OpenITC and GoTekky also use their own billing system.
Billing 2 is coming SOON!
I'd recommend changing providers. Anyways, "past serious flaws" applies to every software you're using or have used; I would recommend throwing your computer away.
Edis uses WHMCS for their billing system. It is their current control panel (in house?) which is horrible but they'll be moving to Atomia soon™
Non WHMCS/Non Solus VPS providers I've used...none of which are low end:
IntoDNS (HostBill billing, in house panel)
CloudVPS (in house)
BalticServers (in house with some help from CloudLix)
Hetzner (in house)
HostVirtual (in house)
NephoScale (in house)
Partially WHMCS or Solus free list:
Prometeus uses HostBill for billing and their new IWStack cloud doesn't use Solus (their regular VPS line uses Solus)
SeFlow uses their' Valhalla' panel for VPS billing and management of rDNS and a few other functions for VPS's but Solus is used for VPS reinstalls and some other functions
Why are so many topics focus'd around SolusVM hate rather than what provider provides, Regardless of the billing/management software used to do so. ?
SolusVM kinda covers all angles for basic vps usage, Ok so some features are not in SolusVM doesn't mean they wont be ever just means they are not at moment, All i can say is support wise SolusVM act an reply within hours if not minutes mostly even for the most simpliest of issues. So i think the expense of it is justified.
Letting one previous flaw make you move from the platform, After they are auditing an stuff which means you've moved away from a platform that accepted its flaws an put in place measures to patch them, To a panel less used an when flaws arise from that its a repeat cycle of OH lets move to a new hardly used platform.
@DomainBop.
I saw Atomia maybe a year or so ago, looked impressive.
This is a good troll post
@FRCorey uses OnApp for a reasonable price if you want to count that
I just think that a code audit should be done in every commercial product before it is being sold.
Doing a security audit after someone find two critical vulnerabilities and an important provider gets easily hacked is just a way to "save the face" as we say in italian.
And IMO a security audit should be useful to find complex and somehow unknown vulnerabilities, not just user input passed to exec() or a sql query. This make it seems like they never even reviewed or read the code. And what? Cleartext passwords?
@Damian: Yes, most software had security flaws in the past but i don't remember many companies that have been victim of a theft of about 500k customers credit cards (for who don't remember https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UGNazi#WHMCS_leak).
For 'security' in my mind actually ovh is in a blacklist too: http://status.ovh.net/?do=details&id=5070
We have a custom VPS panel however we use WHMCS because we feel there are no better alternatives
I used providerservice a while back, their billing / support is done via email. It wasn't too bad :P
As stated in the article that you linked:
Can you explain to me what this has to do with code or a code audit or anything else? Or has to do with software at all?
cloudive, backupsy
@Damien: i was talking about SolusVM code audit.
Anyway you manage a such impressive credit cards numbers and you don't use physical tokens or stuff like that?
This doesn't sound professionals to me.
Add https://kgovps.com to that list. I am the developer as well
At least half of your arguments don't seem to make sense. I stopped reading after that. #2 and #7 are contradictory are they not? How do you know it's "horrible security" because of unescaped input and mysql query if you cannot see the code?
I will agree with one point which is that Solus KVM features aren't all that great compared to their OpenVZ features. However, they are still better than anyone elses KVM features from what I have seen. That's just the black box nature of KVM mostly.
Not sure what your issue is with VNC. You can connect directly with your own VNC client if you don't like how they connect can you not?
Last but not least. By excluding SolusVM/WHMCS you are more often then not going more downmarket. Not the other way.
@sman: actually i read the article on localhost.re about the vulnerability and since the exploit worked and solus devs had to release a patch i believe in the unescaped input story.
Anyway ioncube can be decoded while it's impossible to fully return to the original code due to its obfuscation features. (like random variables names)
The problem with their vnc is that the server doesn't support encrypted connection.
It's written here http://lowendtalk.com/discussion/7516/is-the-vnc-in-solusvm-connecting-via-ssl as well as in the solusvm official forum.
Do any of the control panels support that? If that is the one and only reason not to use SolusVM that is up to you. If it's an important enough feature for enough people I'm sure they will add it sooner or later.
I wouldn't judge any one panel on any one feature myself. I've looked at them all and none of them do KVM all that well imho. Either because KVM is not widely enough used to justify the features yet or because of the black box nature of KVM or perhaps both.
I think it also has a lot to do with the fact many KVM providers are cloud providers not VPS providers. So the VPS control panel guys may never have enough business from it to justify more advanced features.
What black box nature? The code is open source which to anyone with knowledge of how Linux (and the Linux kernel) works and some basic programming skills makes KVM almost the exact opposite of a black box.
Black box from an admin point of view. A KVM VM is an image file as opposed to OpenVZ which is a browsable directory. So a lot of things that are easy on OpenVZ from a host/node administrator and control panel point of view are much more difficult or impossible on KVM.
The good thing with these WHMCS portals is the flexibility and speed of growth a new hosting provider may utilize. There is a lot of custom made software available. HOWEVER you cannot edit the code thus lack a lot of flexibility. Especially with a growing hosting company this will hinder further growth.
Proxmox is a good alternative to SolusVM, but the WHMCS plugin is made by a third party and I dont like this.
We use Homemade VPS control Panel but WHMCs as billing system, We looking move to our homemade Billing system As soon as possible.
GridVirt
MediaTemple
Is it that bad?
There are simple means to access file systems in KVM image. An example.
From customer's viewpoint, the less easy is to access my data directly on VM, the better.
A lot of things that are easy on OpenVZ are not on KVM as the Host Administrator. Not just access to the VM's. Templates, interfaces, resizing. The list is long and varied. If you use both like I do you will know that. Not just onesies twosies but having to deal with hundreds or thousands of them.
Doesn't have much to do with accessing your data. Host administrator can change your root password and access your data any time they want. Unless the customer is using FS encryption to hide what they are doing which only makes it run slower and more stuff for them to deal with so good luck with that. I won't provide any support if they do that and then have problems because of it or because I cannot access what I need to in order to troublehoot.
As per other discussions here. If you are that paranoid about the admin accessing your data then you should not be using a VPS in the first place. It's laughable to admins because, again as per other threads, we have much better things to do then snoop around hundreds/thousands of VPS's.
In fact, I do. I run/maintain a zoo of VMs as part of development process (using VirtualBox, KVM, VMWare).
However, when I need console access to KVM, I just use virt-manager. "What's your problem?"
And yes, I use encryption. Provider is free to analyse filesystems of VM I use. I wish them luck trying to decrypt symmetric keys I use.
Answering another possible question: no, I do not do anything illegal/whatever. I am just making use of my right for privacy.
Now I remember, you were badmouthing OpenVZ because it doesn't do one specialized thing you want. Something about a particular iptables filter I think. Ok that explains it. Whatever works for you. Set up OpenVZ and Administer 100 VPS's on it for awhile then we can talk and compare the differences between the two.
Like I said I do both OpenVZ and KVM hosting so I don't have any business bias. I can use either for what I do. I much prefer OpenVZ because it makes my life easier. Also, customers prefer it because the control panel has more buttons and graphs and boots much quicker because no kernel. I just give them what they want.