Many hosting companies in the web hosting Dubai industry offer two types of hosting solutions - managed or unmanaged. Managed services cost a bit more than unmanaged services because of the fact that the hosting provider itself will assign a dedicated team for technical support and management. However, for unmanaged services, it's up to the user to manage the website environment. 

When it comes to effectively managing such environments, control panels are vital. The dedicated server UAE sector generally adheres to certain standards when it comes to control panels, and widely uses popular control panels that aren't available for free. Web owners availing unmanaged hosting services may not be keen on investing in such pay-and-use control panels. So here are a few free alternatives to manage dedicated servers.

Zpanel

This free control panel supports all popular operating systems including Windows, macOS X, Linux, and UNIX. With a PHP front end, Zpanel also comes with DNS, email, database and FTP management capabilities. Zpanel's back end is driven by Apache, HTTP Server, PHP, and MySQL. Major cons include a lack of multiple server management capability and no firewalls for maximum security. 

Ajenti

Ajenti is an open source control panel that supports many operating systems including all Linux distributions, Gentoo, RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu, Debian etc. It's widely used by many hosting providers in the VPS hosting Dubai sector offering free hosting services because of its higher performance capabilities. Ajenti features built-in text editor, terminal access, code manager, and file manager. 

The user will also be able to easily configure servers like Samba, Munin etc. Its virtual email feature comes with auto-configuration of Courier IMAP and EXIM 4, and is also popular for being one of the most lightweight free control panels around. 

Virtualmin GPL

Another open source control panel with thousands of active users, Virtualmin is a more refined version of the Webmin control panel. Written in PHP, it supports all Linux distributions, UNIX, and BSD extensions. Virtualmin comes in 3 versions, of which only the Virtualmin GPL is free. It's an ideal option for domain hosting and virtual servers like OpenVZ. 

Conclusion

Control panels are important technical aspects for any web hosting solution, which makes people hesitant to use free control panels. However, freebies can be just as good as commercial products depending on where and how they are used. Though the control panels mentioned above aren't cut out for serious web management, they can still get the job done.