Opterius Panel is a modern hosting control panel built for hosting companies, agencies, and developers who are tired of cPanel's pricing, dated UI, and licensing complexity. It runs on your own server, manages everything cPanel manages — and includes a billing system (Opterius Commerce) that replaces WHMCS at no extra cost.
Opterius is one product with two modes: Server Mode (the WHM-style admin view) and Hosting Mode (the cPanel-style end-user view). Both ship in the same install. Whether you're a hosting company managing 200 customers or an individual running 5 personal sites, you use the same panel.
What you get out of the box
Every Opterius installation includes:
- Hosting accounts with disk and bandwidth quotas, suspension, and per-account isolation
- Domains and unlimited subdomains per account
- Mail server (Postfix + Dovecot + OpenDKIM + Rspamd) with webmail via Roundcube
- DNS management via PowerDNS (authoritative DNS server, not just records)
- Free SSL certificates auto-issued via Let's Encrypt
- MySQL/MariaDB databases with phpMyAdmin
- Multiple PHP versions (8.1 through 8.4) running side-by-side, switchable per domain
- File manager with web-based editor and FTP/SSH access
- Cron jobs scheduled per account
- Account backups including files, databases, and email
- Security tools — firewall management, Fail2ban, malware scanning, chrooted SSH
- cPanel migration importer — upload a cPanel backup file, get all your sites restored
How Opterius is different
Most hosting panels are either old (cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin) or feel half-finished (HestiaCP, CWP, ISPConfig, aaPanel). Opterius is designed to be the modern alternative:
- One flat monthly price — no per-account licensing tax. Free for up to 5 hosting accounts. Paid plans from $19/mo with unlimited accounts.
- Both Panel and Commerce included — the bundle replaces cPanel + WHMCS for the price of just one of them.
- Two-mode UI that adapts to who's logged in. Admins get the WHM-style view, end-users get the cPanel-style view, both ship in the same product.
- Single binary agent that runs on your server alongside the Laravel panel, separating system management from the web UI for security.
- Multi-Linux support — Ubuntu, Debian, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, RHEL, CentOS Stream all work out of the box.
[!TIP] If you're migrating from cPanel and want to compare costs, see How much does cPanel actually cost in 2026? — most hosting companies save $54+/mo per server by switching.
How it works at a glance
┌──────────────────────┐ ┌──────────────────────┐
│ Opterius Panel │ HMAC │ Opterius Agent │
│ (Laravel, port 8443)│ ──────▶ │ (Go, port 7443) │
│ │ │ │
│ Web UI for users │ │ Manages Nginx, │
│ and admins │ │ PHP-FPM, MySQL, │
│ │ │ Postfix, Dovecot, │
│ │ │ PowerDNS, certbot, │
│ │ │ systemd... │
└──────────────────────┘ └──────────────────────┘
The Panel is a Laravel app that handles everything you see in the web UI — accounts, domains, billing, customer management, settings. It runs as www-data and never touches the system directly.
The Agent is a tiny Go binary that runs as root on the same server. The Panel sends signed HTTP requests to the Agent whenever it needs to do something on the underlying system: create a Linux user, write an Nginx vhost, issue an SSL cert, restart a service. This separation means the web UI process never has root, which is a huge security improvement over cPanel's monolithic architecture.
Who is Opterius for?
| You are... | Opterius is right for you if... |
|---|---|
| A solo developer with a few personal sites | Free tier covers 5 sites. Replaces cPanel for $0. |
| A freelancer hosting client sites | Starter plan ($19/mo) is unlimited accounts on one server. |
| A growing hosting company (10–500 customers) | Business plan ($59/mo) covers up to 5 servers, replaces cPanel + WHMCS for less than the cost of cPanel alone. |
| A datacenter or hosting provider with many servers | Datacenter plan ($179/mo) is unlimited servers + priority support. |
If you fall into one of those four buckets, you're our customer.
Next steps
- System Requirements — what kind of VPS you need
- Installation — install Opterius on a fresh VPS in 5 minutes
- First Login — log in for the first time and change the admin password
- Server Mode vs Hosting Mode — understand the two-mode UI