An interactive website attract users easily. Thanks to Nodejs, creating real-time websites with Live Chat, instant messaging, etc. is rather easy.

But, migrating such websites need proper planning. And, the available Nodejs cPanel alternative options include Plesk, Virtualmin, etc.

At Bobcares, we get consultation requests from our customers regarding control panel choice as part of our Server Migration Services.

Today, we’ll see the merits and demerits of various Nodejs cPanel alternative options.

How is Node.js app useful?

Node.js is a run-time environment that allows the executing of code on the server side.

Mainly, Node.js is used to create real-time web applications. Another sweet-spot example for Node.js will be the eCommerce transactions. It include websites that has chatting apps, instant messaging like WhatsApp, etc.

In addition, video conference application, online gaming, community storage solutions are some of the other real-time applications.

Popular websites that utilize the node.js platform include eBay, PayPal, LinkedIn and many more.

And the popular control panels which supports Node.js are cPanel, Plesk Onyx, Virtualmin, etc.

Nodejs cPanel alternative options

Can you suggest some free alternatives of cPanel that offer Node.js support?

This was a recent customer query we got at the help desk of our Server Migration Services.

Based on our experience in server management, we see that customers mostly prefer Plesk Onyx or Virtualmin as an alternative to cPanel control panel.

Now, let’s see more details about Node.js support in Plesk Onyx and Virtualmin.

1. Plesk Onyx

Plesk Onyx comes with a unique Node.js extension enabling you to readily handle applications. It easily works as a run-time environment for developing server-side Web applications.

Fortunately, the Node.js extension is provided for Free in Plesk.

Also, adding Node.js support in Plesk enables you to do the following.

1. We can add Node.js applications to the websites
2. Managing of application like start/stop/restart the application, editing the configuration files becomes quite easy.
3. Plesk supports the installation of multiple Node.js versions on the same server.

How to install Node.js on Plesk Onyx

Here, let’s see how our Migration Engineers install Node.js extension on Plesk.

1. Initially, we log into Plesk control panel.

2. Then, we go to Tools & Settings, and click “Updates and Upgrades”.

3. Next, we click on  “Add/Remove Components”. Also, we expand Web hosting and select the “NodeJS support” component.

4. Finally, we click on Continue to begin the installation.

In a few minutes, Node.js extension will be installed.

In addition, when we migrate a server from cPanel to Plesk, we should install the Node.js extension server wide. Again, it is necessary to enable the Node.js component per domains.

To enable the Node.js for a domain, we go to Websites & Domains >> Node.js >> click on Enable Node.js icon to activate it.

2. Virtualmin

Virtualmin is a popular and open-source control panel that helps to manage the Linux servers. Also, it allows the installation of apps such as Node.js.

In order to install Node.js on Debian or Ubuntu, there should be an existing package in the repository named “nodejs”. So, we can just install that with apt.

For that, we use the following steps.

1. Firstly, we login into the server as a root user

2. Then, we run the below command to refresh the APT cache.

apt update

3. Next, we install Node.js by running the following command.

apt install nodejs

Also. we can check the Node.js version with nodejs -v command.

[Having trouble while setting up NodeJs on a server? We’ll fix it for you.] 

Conclusion

In short, Plesk and Virtualmin are the popular Node.js cPanel alternative options in Linux. Today, we saw the pros and cons of these control panels based on our experience in Migration Service.