Hello all,
I've been around since the WebsitePanel days, and briefly dotNETPanel before that.
I've been onboard with the new generation of the software as SolidCP and been keeping my eyes open for the so-called future with FuseCP, but seeing that the latest update to the software was in early 2023 (...no signs of life with Fuse) and there's effectively been no news, I've been concerned about going forward with a new project I have that I have been planning to build upon SolidCP.
I have a datacenter that I'm in the process of building a test infrastructure for and I'm still going ahead with SolidCP but with the outdated software, and a seemingly growing list of software that no longer works I worry I'm wasting my time.
Seeing as my business centers around security I don't like the idea of running software that is severely out dated.
In my process of building the testing environment I have been looking to the 3rd party integrations such as WHMCS, HostBill and more and the trend is that there is only minimal support if any for SolidCP, and most just use the WebsitePanel integration with updated naming. HostBill doesn't really support the software at all with an extremely limited set of features, mainly starting and stopping a shared hosting site, there's no options for integration with SharePoint, Exchange, Hyper-V, or literally anything else, so that takes it out of the question for using in production (unless all you want to do is Shared Hosting).
Long Story Short, what's the future? Is there a future? Am I wasting my time? Should I seek alternative Windows Hosting Automation?
I would rather not invest my time and effort into building this new business, updating the code myself and updating 3rd party plugins if there's no future.
Please help me decide my course of action. Is anyone else using this in production in 2024 and if so to what extent?
Hello Nick,
SolidCP is still worked on quite a bit, you can see it's activities via github: https://github.com/FuseCP/SolidCP
We have however not released a stable public version for a bit, the current version still supports most up-to-date software which is commonly used (windows server, hyper-v, exchange, active directory, iis, iis ftp, etc).
That being said some other projects (for example Smartermail) have been left behind - as this is really a community project it depends on the community what is being worked on, updated, and so forth.
3rd party integrations:
We personally only have worked on the whmcs plugin, which is in our downloads section, it does however work in a way where it creates the nessecary resources in solidcp (user/ hosting plan/ etc) but does not provide management pages within WHMCS (for that it refers to SolidCP pages).
To use SolidCP:
To use or not use SolidCP is ofcourse a completely personal question, it depends on your goals end customers and alot with what type of software you want to run if you want to use the software "as-is".
The benefit is ofcourse that it's opensource, you can develop, tune, change, add etc to your own likings and abilities (forever).
The Future:
it's still being worked on daily, it has some good community members and sponsors to keep it going.
Regards,
Marco
Thanks for your reply Marco!
I was, honestly, hoping for a more rounded answer about the future considering that FuseCp website has been a placeholder for years and we are over a year and a half since a version update of SolidCP.
Sure some files here and there updated once in a while. I have noticed that in the Github.
It's just SolidCP has a lot of potential I think... and you know... we have both been around this software project a long time, and I think the Website Panel days there was a lot more going on and a more vibrant outlook for the future of the project.
What I would like to know is what needs to happen for some serious road mapping and development to take place aside from people and small businesses developing their own integrations with the software?
I was using WSP on server 2008 for many years and even got personal support from you on many occasions back then. I would definitely like to keep using what I'm familiar with I also want it to have a successful future.
There really isn't a more rounded answer to it.
As SolidCP depends on the freetime and contributions from everyone (including my self) there's no time frame or "dedicated work" on SolidCP.
To make that happen SolidCP would need to be financially independent, with a hired staff that works on SolidCP as a living. (currently SolidCP is mostly financed by company to stay running).
@m-tiggelaar I appreciate the insight.
At this point in my testing and development I'm planning to move forward on the latest source.
Any custom modules or other features I add or alter in the code I'll share what I can. Maybe I can be of help to the cause.
Thanks again.
