It would be interesting to read some comparisons between HestiaCP and other panels, particularly the 3 biggest commercial CPs (cPanel, Plesk and Directadmin) and the popular FOSS CPs (e.g. Virtualmin/Webmin and ISPconfig).
We might discuss aspects like performance, features, security, ease of use, integration with third party software (e.g. WHMCS, CSF firewall, Softaculous commercial script library etc).
hey @kpv, feel free to write something up. but keep in mind that the goal of each panel might be different.
especially HestiaCP does not neccessarily aim at the things cPanel, Plesk or Directadmin do.
instead it strives to be something that a system admin likes to use to make his tasks more easy or compact - while keeping as much options as possible to still manually change things in the system.
whereas I think most of the so called “competitors” want to be a replacement for a system admin at all.
we are not interested in competing in that area at all, but rather find what’s helping people who manage servers on a daily basis. and for us it is very important that people see that from the beginning to have their expectations set correctly.
with that said a comparison would surely help to point that out… but might look a bit different, or at least should always keep that perspective in mind 
I currently use cPanel and partly moving websites to another server, Debian with HestiaCP instead of CentOS 7 with cPanel.
I notice that cPanel has more features and a very intense GUI. But it needs some extensions to fulfill basic needs like external backup and nginx reverse proxy (cpnginx). Or Litespeed. These extensions come with lifetime or monthly costs. Hestia has a sufficient off-site backup system and a preconfigured nginx reverse proxy(!).
For a normal webserver Hestia has everything on board. The File Manager is not so sophisticated like in cPanel, but it has one, which fulfill basic needs. The only thing I miss here is syntax highlighting in the editor, but this is nice to have.
Hestia comes with an automatic backup system, which is programmed to make backups every day. It can configured easily with the terminal to add external backup locations like Backblaze. Restore also over Terminal only. I like the Terminal. But if someone only like to work with GUI, cPanel has advantages here. I like the approach to use the faster zstd compression.
I mostly need Wordpress Installs. Hestia dies this, but it has no WP administration addon. Like cPanel. But this can be done externally via the free MainWP system.
I tried to add configserver with a rest system and succeeded, but I think the onboard security is sufficient.
Generally I consider Hestia as the best free alternative for cPanel and for Webhosting in general.
hey @mandrael thanks for the warm words and happy to see it works for you. but please keep in mind that the larger panels more likely are targeted at a different audience, often with a higher number of accounts/domains/pages etc.
this alone usually changes the needs of the people managing things with it. of course quite a lot of people start with something like that from a clients perspective and at some point might use it while they grow (simply because they knew it already) and later on notice that there are other tools in the box.
but that’s also why we are so hesitant lately with any comparisons and such. we don’t want to be a competitor but a different tool for different needs. just as you found out we focus on different features as default, because we feel more need for it. does not mean we do better than other panels though. just different 
TL;DR; glad you like our approach and welcome!
“while keeping as much options as possible to still manually change things in the system.”
This was the main reason I chose HestiaCP after testing a bunch of alternatives!
If HestiaCP doesn’t “allow” me to do something, I’ll do it manually (as I would if I managed the server without a panel), and so far it has worked very well for my needs.
To be honest, I don’t see anything I want to do so far on hestiacp that I havn’t been able to do. Just please add the feature where we can create temporary admin for a certain domain Incase we need an external person to work on it, so they don’t have access to all domains and all. Thanks and keep up the good work.
We have allready multi user support… So what do you want to add more?
More sub users?
Thanks for your response. You know currently, if I create a user, the user can have access to all the domains, not selected ones, of can they?
That can be accomplished by using all the users accounts.
What you want is an admin user with access to a subset of the total of users. Like a reseller?
Let me say I need you to do something on one of my websites and i need to give you admin access, but i dont want you to have access to all other domains in my hestiacp, i just want you to be able to access a particular domain and it’s attached services like its file manager, dns, email, cron and database. It happens often when i need someone to do somethign for me on their script directly from my server, i have to give them admin access, but then they have access to all my other domains. I hope you understand.
Put each domain in a separate user and give the person the login details to that user…
How can I do that when all the websites(domains) are already live and functional?
Did you put those all under the same user account?
Exactly, and naturally, I should create a use for each domain obviously right?.. So now, I’m now suggesting an important feature where you can create a temporary access for just a website and all that’s attributed to it, for temporary admin access.
That’s what I’m saying, that other than that feature, I don’t see why everyone is using cpanel and havn’t moved to hestiacp yet, cos this hestiacp is just awesome.
Will never happen. It would mean a complete rewrite for us . And it is not the time investment worth for us.
and
To move a website to a new user.
Yes, for every client create a different user. Naturally, one client can have multiple domains in the same account.
Im sure you understand the problem now.
As eris suggested, create an user and then transfer the ownership with the cli commands.