Webhosting panel

Hi all,

I've been learning much about webhosting.
In the couple last months I migrated my websites multiple times to finally have what "advanced" users have and "after this I never need to migrate again..."
Im currently hosting plesk servers with digitalocean to host client website's.
I like plesk, its very easy to manage/setup lots of wp websites, but I still think im missing something.

Now I noticed people saying plesk is for beginners and I don't want to consider myself an beginner anymore.
So my question is.
What are advanced users using for their hosting?
And as im only experienced with low traffic websites.
How and what do people use to host websites with lots of traffic?

The real war is between Directadmin and WHM/Cpanel. Personally, I prefer Directadmin as it is easy to configure, easy to admin and easier for 1 account to have multiple domains without all the files in public_html/domain1 public_html/domain2 so customers are not bugging me. Adding/Removing databases is far more easy and It also has Custombuild for updates which works fantastic and another plus is pricing is much better.

Cpanel has advantages as for my point of view in phpmyadmin no need to login with each db user and pass each time, the integration with WHMCS is far better and the File Manager is somehow convenient.

Of course there are more or less advantages for each of them as every one has his own habits and workflow, all I said is just me.

You can try both and see what you like more.

If you want to learn, install lamp on Linux Based server and host your site manually.
That is the advance level 1
then you can load balance i.e, moving db to another server and sites to other or nginx configuration as reverse proxy for cache and better delivery of static content. etc etc.

If you want to have knowledge.

I suggest you to use VPS with 2GB RAM to start. Install LAMP and configure it without panel. Then you will have knowledge. (Just like @stromind) mention.

DirectAdmin is a strong competitor of cPanel many Hosting Providers are switching to DirectAdmin because is more cheap and better due to cPanel raises prices.