A lightweight hosting control panel
A control panel should be the smallest thing on a hosting server. UHost's own two services use about twenty megabytes of memory between them, and everything else on the machine is there to serve your websites.
Measured
These are readings, not adjectives.
Taken from two servers actually running UHost, one of them hosting real websites. Anybody can take them again with the commands below.
Memory used by the panel and its privileged agent together, on a server with nothing else asked of it.
The same two services on a server hosting websites, with email, authoritative DNS and containers all installed and running.
The whole installation on disk, including the panel's own web interface.
The download. One signed archive, fetched once, checked against a published checksum before anything runs.
Read on 19 September 2026 from release 0.96.29, on an Ubuntu 26.04 server and an Ubuntu 24.04 server, using the memory systemd accounts to each service (systemctl show -p MemoryCurrent) and the disk du reports. Memory on a working server moves about, so treat these as the scale rather than as constants.
What a server needs
One gigabyte of memory, two gigabytes of disk.
Not a suggestion: the installer reads both before it starts and refuses rather than half installing a panel on a machine that cannot hold it.
| Published minimum to install | Memory | Free disk |
|---|---|---|
| UHost | 1 GB | 2 GB |
| The most widely used hosting panel | 2 GB, and 4 GB recommended | 20 GB, and 40 GB recommended |
| Another widely used panel | 1 GB, plus 1 GB of swap | 20 GB |
Every figure here is a minimum each panel publishes for installing on Linux, read from its own documentation on 19 September 2026. A published minimum is not a measurement of how much a panel uses, and it is not a benchmark: it is what each maker says a server should have before you begin. We compare them because it is the one number every panel states in the same terms, and because it is the number you pay for when you rent a machine.
Where the weight actually is
The database engine uses several times what the panel does.
On the quiet server above, MariaDB was using 88 MB while the panel used 18 MB. On the busy one, MariaDB was using 257 MB. Nginx and PHP account for most of the rest. That is the ordinary shape of a hosting server, and it is the argument for a small panel: the memory your websites and their databases need is the memory that does the work, and a panel spending hundreds of megabytes is spending it on itself.
UHost keeps its own part small by being two Go programs and a SQLite file rather than a stack of services. The panel answers the browser, a separate privileged agent does the work that needs root, and the panel's own records live in one file rather than in a database server of their own.
What it buys you
The machine you already pay for goes further.
- A smaller server runs a real hosting business. A lightweight hosting control panel leaves the memory and the disk for the websites, which is what your customers are paying for.
- Installing is mostly Ubuntu. Most of a first install is the distribution fetching PHP, MariaDB and Nginx. Unpacking the panel itself is a 16.8 MB download and a few seconds of work.
- Less to go wrong. Two services and a file is a short list of things that can break, and systemd restarts either service on failure without anybody being woken up.
- It updates in one piece. One signed archive replaces the panel, with a snapshot taken first and a rollback if the new release does not come up healthy.
Every figure on this page can be taken again on your own server. The memory readings are systemctl show -p MemoryCurrent hosting-panel-api.service and the same for hosting-panel-agent.service, and the disk is du -sh /opt/hosting-panel/current.
Questions
What a server needs, and what it is asked.
What do I need to run UHost?
A fresh Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or 26.04 LTS server with root access, at least 1 GB of memory and 2 GB of free disk, and a hostname pointing at it. Any provider works. The installer checks the memory and the disk and refuses rather than half installing. Ubuntu is what UHost installs on today; more Linux distributions are planned. Hosting email needs the server to have a name, not only an IP address.
What does the installer ask me?
Nothing. One command installs a working panel: it works out the address to answer on, gives itself a certificate, installs PHP, MariaDB and phpMyAdmin, and prints a single-use token to create your account with. The first time you sign in, a setup wizard asks for the rest, such as the name to answer on, a real certificate, email hosting, authoritative DNS, Node.js and container websites. Everything it offers can also be turned on later.
See what it does with the room it leaves.
Websites, email, DNS, SSL, databases and backups, in one panel priced per server.