ISPmanager is a Russian-built hosting control panel, popular in the CIS (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan) and Eastern Europe. Created in 2003 by ISPsystem as a cPanel alternative. About 80,000 servers worldwide run on ISPmanager today, and the CIS figure is even higher.
Differences from cPanel
The first and biggest difference โ price. cPanel licenses cost $400-1500+ per year (depending on server size); ISPmanager $100-300/year. Big savings for hosting providers, which means cheaper plans for clients. Second โ the interface is Russian-first. cPanel has a Russian translation, but ISPmanager was built for the Russian-speaking audience from the start; terms and menus are familiar to CIS users.
Third โ ISPmanager comes in 4 distinct versions: Lite (small shared hosting), Business (large shared/reseller), Host (VPS), Cluster (multi-server). cPanel lacks this segmentation; it has separate versions only for shared/VPS.
Main sections
WWW domains โ site management, virtual hosts configuration, PHP versions (ISPmanager 6 supports modular per-domain PHP version selection). Mail accounts โ email accounts, IMAP/POP3 and SMTP configuration, spam filters. Databases โ MySQL and PostgreSQL (cPanel has weaker PostgreSQL support), phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin. DNS โ DNS records (A, MX, CNAME, TXT, SPF), Reverse DNS configuration. FTP users โ FTP user creation, directory restrictions. Backups โ automatic schedule (daily/weekly/monthly), send to external server (Yandex Disk, Amazon S3). SSL โ Let's Encrypt automatic, custom SSL also supported.
Installing WordPress and other CMSes
ISPmanager lacks Softaculous, but you can use Installatron or a similar auto-installer plugin. Manual installation is also simple: download WordPress from the official site, upload via File Manager, create a MySQL database, and run install.php.
Sayt.uz practice
Among Sayt.uz clients 6% use ISPmanager โ mostly VPS Pro users and those who prefer Russian. cPanel is currently more popular (92%), but ISPmanager is cheaper and Russian-native โ fits those looking for an inexpensive solution. Tip: cPanel and ISPmanager are functionally nearly equivalent; choice depends on language preference and price sensitivity. ISPmanager is easy to learn โ you'll master the basics in 1-2 weeks.