Looking for honest comparison of DirectAdmin vs Hestia

Honest comparison of DirectAdmin vs Hestia I am migrating from cPanel after fifteen years. : my monitoring shows cPanel license cost now exceeds server cost. I need a panel for small client sites, not enterprise orchestration. I have tested both DirectAdmin and Hestia for two weeks each. Here is what I observed:

• DirectAdmin: stable, commercial support, plugin ecosystem. Interface feels dated. Backup format is proprietary.
• Hestia: modern UI, open source, built-in firewall management. Faster updates but occasionally breaks on major Debian releases.

Look I've used DirectAdmin for years for my server, right? The terminal is where I spend my time anyway, right?

The interface is dated but STABLE, right? I tried Hestia and the update broke my BIND, right? Spent 2 hours in the terminal fixing it

For production server seriously I prefer DirectAdmin, right?

To be exact: DirectAdmin requires recurring payment even for internal use, which creates a compliance footprint under GDPR Article 32 for financial data processing.

Hestia collects no telemetry. As far as I know, that reduces your DPO workload. I've run Hestia on three production servers since 2023. One major upgrade issue, fixed within 48 hours via the community.

The privacy point speaks in Hestia's favour. The stability point, to be exact, is closer than the marketing suggests.