The history of ISPConfig

In 2005, two Germans from projektfarm GmbH, the same crew that ran HowtoForge, published a panel to manage Linux hosting servers. Twenty-one years later, the ISPConfig is still standing. It remains BSD-licensed, with no per-account or per-mailbox fee, and manages sites, email, DNS, FTP, and databases on a single server or multiple servers. This is the story of how a small project survived two decades in which cPanel kept getting more expensive, and why it still matters for anyone setting up hosting.

2005: the panel from the ones who wrote the howtos

The first public version of ISPConfig, the 2.0.4, was published on SourceForge on 13 July 2005. Behind it were Till Brehm and Falko Timme, from projektfarm GmbH in Germany, the company that still runs the project today. In 2009 the official site presented itself like this: ISPConfig was started by the same people who run HowtoForge. That is the site of “Perfect Server” tutorials with which a generation of administrators learned how to set up Postfix, BIND and Apache.

This origin explains the panel's style. It was built by people who already documented, step by step, how to configure each service by hand. ISPConfig automates precisely that recipe, and from the start it has been distributed under the BSD license. The 2.x line received updates until 2011: the last folder for it on SourceForge is 2.2.40, from August of that year.

2009: the 3 line arrives

In May of 2009, the official site was announcing the new 3.0.1.2 and 3.0.1.3 versions of the 3 line, and the home page still listed among the supported distributions Mandriva, Red Hat, Fedora, SuSE, Debian 3.0 to 5.0, Ubuntu 5.04 to 9.04, and CentOS. It is the 3 line that survives to this day, following this model:

• the panel is built in PHP and stores everything in MySQL/MariaDB;
• on each server, backend plugins write the actual configuration of services: Apache or nginx vhosts, Postfix and Dovecot mailboxes, BIND zones and Pure-FTPd accounts;
• a single panel controls multiple servers, with configuration replication between them and, if you want, mirroring for high availability;
• there are four access levels: administrator, reseller, client and email user. It is possible to delegate hosting without giving away root.

That same year, ISPConfig was also a finalist in the “Best Tool or Utility for SysAdmins” category at the SourceForge Community Choice Awards 2009. It is a sign of how widely the project was already used.

2016 to 2019: the 3.1 line

A 3.1 arrived on SourceForge in 27 September 2016, and this is the stage at which this article was written. When the original post came out, the stable version was 3.1.2, from 25 January 2017. It was already translated into Brazilian Portuguese and included support for HHVM on Ubuntu 16.04, used in the hosting course I was preparing at the time. The 3.1 series received updates until 3.1.15, September 2019.

At that time the project supported Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS and OpenSUSE, but already recommended Debian or Ubuntu. I reported bugs for the panel to work properly on OpenSUSE and talked to Falko Timme about that.

2020: ISPConfig 3.2

A 3.2 was published on 15 October 2020, and the official site itself presents it as the “next generation” of the panel. The 3.2 series received updates up to 3.2.11p1, from October 2023.

2025: ISPConfig 3.3 and PostgreSQL

A 3.3 was released on 25 April 2025. The main new features:

• databases PostgreSQL for the sites, in addition to MySQL and MariaDB;
• load graphs in the dashboard and in the monitoring module;
• improvements to Let's Encrypt certificates;
• PHP-CLI versions equal to the PHP of each site.

In October of 2025 came 3.3.0p3, a security update.

2026: Debian 13, Ubuntu 26.04, and a security round

A 3.3.1, on January 22, 2026, brought:

• support for Debian 13, with Dovecot 2.4;
• support for AlmaLinux 10 and Rocky Linux 10;
• compatibility with PHP 8.5;
• pgAdmin for PostgreSQL databases;
• the fix for three privilege escalation flaws.

3.3.1p1, from March, fixed bugs in that version.

In September 18, 2026 came out 3.3.2, and three days later the patch 3.3.2p1. She brought:

• support for Ubuntu 26.04;
• enforcement of the DMARC policy on incoming email;
• database backup without locking the tables;
• fix for a SQL injection in the remote API and for a privilege escalation in Fetchmail.

The details and the step by step for the update are in our post about the ISPConfig 3.3.2.

ISPConfig and Linux

What sets ISPConfig apart from a “mini-cPanel” is that it does not hide Linux. It does not create a parallel system: it generates configuration files common to the usual services. What appears in the panel is in the files, and when something breaks you debug Postfix and nginx, not “the panel”. This is a virtue and it is a cost. ISPConfig is not for those who do not know how to administer Linux, but it is great for those who do and want to delegate the day-to-day.

In the current 3.3 line, the panel covers:

• Web: Apache 2 or nginx, PHP in multiple versions and free SSL via Let’s Encrypt;
• Email: Postfix and Dovecot, with antispam through Rspamd;
• DNS: BIND, and also PowerDNS;
• Databases: MariaDB/MySQL and PostgreSQL;
• FTP and shell: Pure-FTPd and users with jailkit.

According to the announcement at 3.3.2, the supported distributions are:

• Debian 11 to 13 (recommended);
• Ubuntu 22.04 to 26.04 (recommended);
• AlmaLinux 8 to 10 and Rocky Linux 8 to 10;
• CentOS 8.

For a new server, the shortest path is the official automatic installer, in get.ispconfig.org. It sets up the entire server, with panel and services, in a single run. It only works on Debian and Ubuntu (without apt-get, and stops the script) and, in the current version, supports Debian 11 through 13 and Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04, and 26.04. Run it only on a freshly installed machine:

wget -O ispconfig.sh https://get.ispconfig.org
sh ispconfig.sh --help
sh ispconfig.sh --use-nginx --use-php=8.4 --unattended-upgrades

Before running, two precautions:

• the hostname must be an FQDN that resolves, for example hostnamectl set-hostname srv1.seudominio.com.br;
• the email, web, FTP ports and the panel port (8080) must be open.

The --help lists the other options, such as --use-certbot, --use-amavis, --roundcube and --ssh-harden. The panel is located at https://SEU-SERVIDOR:8080.

ISPConfig against the competition

The combination left over for the ISP is unlikely to be found elsewhere: no licensing costs, multiple real servers, and configuration that you can audit in the file. The weak points are also well known:

• the interface is dated;
• there is no one-click application installer;
• the complete documentation is a paid manual;
• updating the distribution with the panel installed requires reading and backing up first.

Timeline

• 13/07/2005: ISPConfig 2.0.4, from projektfarm GmbH (Till Brehm and Falko Timme), under the BSD license;
• 05/2009: the 3 line, with versions 3.0.1.2 and 3.0.1.3;
• 2009: finalist in the SourceForge Community Choice Awards, in the sysadmin tools category;
• 08/2011: 2.2.40, the last directory in the 2 line on SourceForge;
• 27/09/2016: ISPConfig 3.1;
• 25/01/2017: 3.1.2, the stable version at the time this article was written;
• 15/10/2020: ISPConfig 3.2;
• 26/10/2023: 3.2.11p1, the latest in the 3.2 series on SourceForge;
• 25/04/2025: ISPConfig 3.3, with PostgreSQL;
• 10/2025: 3.3.0p3, security update;
• 22/01/2026: 3.3.1, with Debian 13, Dovecot 2.4, PHP 8.5 and three security fixes;
• 09/03/2026: 3.3.1p1;
• 18/09/2026: 3.3.2, with Ubuntu 26.04, DMARC, and security fixes;
• 21/09/2026: 3.3.2p1.

On LinuxPro

I have used ISPConfig since 2007, still on the 2.x line. The Portuguese (Brazil) translation always made a difference when delivering the panel to a client or reseller. Here on the blog there's the howto ISPConfig on Debian, the overview of hosting with ISPConfig and the update guide for the ISPConfig 3.3.2.

The 2017 distance learning courses mentioned in the original text are no longer available. The current course is the Email with Postfix, on Udemy. For those who administer a mail server, it's also worth knowing about the PostfixAdmin history and the project go-postfixadmin.

The ISPConfig lesson is simple: a small project, with a permissive license and made by people who know the server inside out, has lasted twenty years without changing its proposal. The services are real, Debian and Ubuntu are the foundation, and no license is charged per mailbox.

References

• ispconfig.org
• Version archive on SourceForge
• ISPConfig 3.3 announcement
• ISPConfig 3.3.2 announcement
• Source code (GitLab)