Hosting Control Panels: Part 4 — FASTPANEL

FASTPANEL — a free server control panel developed by the hosting provider FASTVPS team. It is installed on a personal VPS or a dedicated server to manage websites, databases, mail, and backups via a web interface without configuring each service manually. In Russia FASTPANEL is one of the most widespread panels: many hosting providers offer VPS with the panel preinstalled.

Licenses

• Standard license — free and perpetual. It is obtained on first login by providing an email address; the license is tied to the server’s IP address. The documentation does not specify limits on the number of sites.
• Extended license (Extended) — paid: €4.20 per month, €46.20 per year, or €399 one-time (according to the FASTPANEL knowledge base as of September 2026). It adds custom panel theming, Prometheus integration, load alerts in Telegram and Slack, disk and mail statistics, support for Node.js applications, and one paid support request per month.

Older reviews mention “FASTPANEL SE Edition” limited to five sites. That was a 2017 edition released for users of a particular forum; this limitation does not apply to the current free license.

Requirements and supported systems

According to the official FASTPANEL instructions, it is installed only on a clean 64-bit system:

• Debian 9, 10, 11, 12;
• Ubuntu 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, 24.04;
• CentOS 7, AlmaLinux 8, Rocky Linux 8.

Minimum requirements — 1 core at 1 GHz, 1 GB of RAM, and 5 GB of free disk space. For a site with mail and a database it’s sensible to plan for at least 2 GB of RAM.

Some of the listed systems no longer receive security updates (Debian 9 and 10, Ubuntu 18.04, CentOS 7), so for a new server choose Debian 12 or Ubuntu 24.04.

Installation

First update the system and install the required packages. For Debian and Ubuntu:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install ca-certificates wget && reboot

After reboot run the installer as root:

wget https://repo.fastpanel.direct/install_fastpanel.sh -O - | bash -

When finished the installer prints the panel address, login and password. The panel opens at https://server-ip-address:8888. On first login FASTPANEL will request a license: enter an email address and the key will be sent by email.

Immediately after first login:

1. Change the admin password and enable two-factor authentication.
2. Restrict access to port 8888 to the addresses you use, or open it only via VPN.
3. Configure backups to external storage — before any sites appear on the server.

Features

• Sites. Nginx and Apache, multiple PHP versions with a choice of mode (CGI, FastCGI, PHP-FPM) per site.
• Databases. MySQL/MariaDB and PostgreSQL, separate users for each database, web interfaces for administration.
• Mail. Mail domains and mailboxes, webmail.
• SSL. Free Let’s Encrypt certificates with automatic renewal.
• DNS. Zone and record management if domains are served by the server itself.
• Backups. Scheduled backups with export to external storage.
• Security. Two-factor authentication, antivirus scanner for site files (Ai-bolit).
• Users and permissions. Separate users and access rights, FTP accounts, file manager.

Container management for Docker is not listed among the panel’s features, but Docker can be installed on the same server and run applications alongside websites. Example — installing n8n on a server with FASTPANEL via Docker Compose: /ru/devops/006/.

Limitations

• Closed source. The panel is free, but it is proprietary. License terms can change and users cannot influence that.
• Not for selling hosting. FASTPANEL is aimed at the server owner and their own sites. Tools for selling hosting to clients — plans, quotas, billing, like in ISPmanager Host or WHM in cPanel — are not described for the panel.
• Documentation is shorter than ISPmanager or cPanel. Answers to non-standard questions often need to be searched for on forums.
• Migration from other panels. We did not find documentation for importing backups from cPanel and Plesk into FASTPANEL, so sites are migrated manually.

Migrating a site to FASTPANEL

Moving from another panel or another server comes down to a few steps:

1. Preparation. In advance, a day before, reduce the TTL of the domain’s DNS records to 300 seconds so the switch happens quickly.
2. Site in the panel. Create the site in FASTPANEL with the same domain, select the same PHP version as on the old server.
3. Files. Copy the site files, for example with rsync -avz over SSH from the old server to the site’s directory on the new server.
4. Database. Make a dump on the old server (mysqldump --single-transaction), create the database and user in the panel and import the dump. Update the site’s configuration with the database name, user and password.
5. Mail. Create mailboxes in the panel and migrate emails over IMAP, for example using imapsync.
6. Check and switch. Open the site at the new address using a hosts file entry on your computer, then change the domain’s A record and issue a Let’s Encrypt certificate on the new server.

This procedure, with post-migration checks, is described in detail in the article /ru/devops/031/.

Common mistakes

• Installing the panel on a “dirty” server. The installer expects a clean system; if Nginx, MySQL or another panel are already installed, installation may break working services.
• Port 8888 open to everyone. The panel is an attractive target for password guessing; access should be restricted by firewall.
• Backups stored on the same server. A backup that sits next to the site will be lost together with it in case of disk failure or a compromise.
• Outdated system. A server on Debian 10 or CentOS 7 with the panel works, but vulnerabilities in the OS are no longer being fixed.

Who FASTPANEL is for

The panel suits an owner of one or several servers who needs to manage a dozen PHP sites, mail and databases for free and without deep Linux expertise. If you need to sell hosting to clients or official support with guarantees, consider ISPmanager; if open source is important — consider HestiaCP.