FlashPanel

A hosted control panel from Vietnam that sets up and runs your own Ubuntu VPS over SSH: it installs Nginx, PHP and databases, creates sites, and deploys PHP, Laravel, WordPress or Node.js apps from Git, in the style of Laravel Forge.

What it is: Platform as a service (PaaS)
Type: Commercial product
Made by: FlashPanel
License: Proprietary
Facts checked: 23 October 2026

What it is

FlashPanel doesn’t host anything. You either give it a provider API key and it creates a server in your own account at Vultr, DigitalOcean, Linode, UpCloud, Hetzner, AWS Lightsail and a few others, or you connect a fresh Ubuntu server (20.04 to 26.04) you already rent, with its root password or SSH key, which FlashPanel says it uses only for the first install and doesn’t store. It then installs the stack you pick (Nginx, PHP and MySQL by default; Apache, OpenLiteSpeed, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and an app store of others) and manages the server from its own servers, so nothing of FlashPanel runs on yours.

Each domain is a site. A PHP site gets its own PHP version (5.6 to 8.5 can sit side by side); a Node.js, Go or Python app runs under PM2 or a service, with the site as an Nginx reverse proxy to its port. Sites can be installed from GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket: a push to the chosen branch, or a call to a deploy trigger URL, pulls the code and runs a deploy script you edit in the dashboard, and for Laravel it writes the .env with the database details. Around that are one-click Let’s Encrypt or ZeroSSL certificates, Supervisor queue workers, cron jobs, backups to S3, Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or SFTP, a firewall and Fail2Ban, a web terminal and file manager, uptime checks, and self-hosted extras such as a mail server, a DNS server, WireGuard and MinIO.

Pricing is per number of servers, not per site or resource: free for 1 server and 10 sites (with 300 server actions a month), then $3 a month for 5 servers, $6 for 20 and $20 for unlimited, with yearly plans at ten times the monthly price. Paid plans add Docker management, teams, the mail and VPN servers, site cloning, load balancing and a REST API. It is a small product, made in Vietnam and first launched as FlashVPS in 2022; it reports about 800 users and 1,000 servers, and its changelog shows releases every few days in October 2026.

Why teams pick it

You keep a plain VPS at your provider’s price, and FlashPanel only configures it, so nothing is locked into its hosting
Cheap: one server is free, and $20 a month covers any number of servers and sites
Push-to-deploy for PHP, Laravel and WordPress, with queues, cron, SSL and backups handled from one dashboard
Migration tools import sites and databases from DirectAdmin, CyberPanel and aaPanel

Watch out for

Not a PaaS in the scaling sense: each site runs on one server you size yourself, and you still own OS patching, capacity and failures
It needs root on a fresh Ubuntu server and may not work on one that already has software installed
A small company that names no legal entity on its site beyond “FlashPanel” under Vietnamese law, so long-term support is harder to judge
Proprietary and hosted only, with root SSH access to every server in one third-party account

Alternatives

What all platform as a service (paas) have in common →Compare side by side →

Cloud FoundryOpen sourceAn open-source PaaS you run yourself: cf push uploads your code, a buildpack stages it into a droplet, and Diego keeps the requested number of instances running behind the Gorouter.

DokkuOpen sourceA Heroku-like PaaS on one server of your own: git push to it, and Dokku builds the app with buildpacks or a Dockerfile and runs it in Docker containers behind nginx.

How it fits with other technologies

What FlashPanel uses

A deploy script for a Laravel site, extending FlashPanel’s default script · bash

# FlashPanel sets these for the site: FLASHPANEL_SITE_ROOT, FLASHPANEL_CODE_BRANCH,
# FLASHPANEL_PHP (the site's PHP binary) and FLASHPANEL_PHP_FPM (its FPM service)
cd $FLASHPANEL_SITE_ROOT

if [ -f composer.lock ]; then
  git checkout composer.lock
fi

git pull origin $FLASHPANEL_CODE_BRANCH

$FLASHPANEL_PHP /usr/local/bin/composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader --no-ansi
$FLASHPANEL_PHP artisan migrate --force

echo 'Restarting FPM...'
sudo -S service $FLASHPANEL_PHP_FPM reload

See it in a real stack

No architecture uses FlashPanel yet. Drop it into the playground and wire it up yourself.Open playground →

Where it came from2021–2026

FlashPanel comes from Vietnam. Its privacy policy dates its own user-data rules to November 30, 2021, and it launched on Product Hunt in 2022 as FlashVPS, a “web-based cloud servers management service”, by maker Chung Nguyễn Trần, who said he wanted to help users in lower-income countries such as Vietnam. Some users’ reviews still call it FlashVPS, and a 2024 Vietnamese tutorial for FlashPanel shows sites under a flashvps system user.

It grew from Laravel-style server provisioning (PHP, Nginx, MySQL, Supervisor and Git deploys) into a general panel with Node.js, Python, Go and .NET guides, Docker, a mail server, a DNS server, VPN, one-click apps such as n8n and Supabase, and tools to migrate from DirectAdmin, CyberPanel and aaPanel. In 2026 it added Ubuntu 26.04 servers, a server events log, multiple Git accounts per site and live log viewers.

Why it’s built this way

Manage servers remotely over SSH: FlashPanel runs the panel on its own servers instead of installing one on yours, so it says it “does not take up your server resources”.
Bring your own VPS: Users pay their provider’s price for compute and FlashPanel only for management, and can connect servers from any provider, including small local hosts.
Price by number of servers: Plans count servers, not sites, so a paid plan hosts unlimited sites; the free plan’s limits are 1 server, 10 sites and 300 server events a month.

Timeline

2021
FlashPanel’s user-data privacy decision is dated November 30
2022
Launches on Product Hunt as FlashVPS
2026
Ubuntu 26.04 servers in August; live log viewer and account center in October

Sources10 · facts checked 23 October 2026

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