An admin panel can be whatever you need it to be – it can manage users and content, provide a bird’s eye view of analytics and monitor various system processes, and is often the cornerstone of any eCommerce, cybersecurity, CMS, or SaaS platform, among others – the sky is truly the limit.

But with such a comprehensive platform, it can be difficult to narrow down an option that is flexible, scalable, and customizable enough to not just address current needs, but be able to adapt to and scale with future growth.

Really, any company looking to invest their time and resources into making use of an admin panel is faced with two options – using an existing offering, or building their own from scratch.

Let’s look at the in-house option first.

Building your own panel comes with numerous benefits – with caveats

The benefits

There’s many benefits to building your own platform from scratch.

The obvious one is that you have full control over your platform at every junction. This can mean any number of things – from tailoring your admin panel to your exact workflow and avoiding bloat, to ensuring that you can deploy timely changes that address your exact needs.

Additionally, an in-house panel can make for a seamless integration with only the existing systems, databases, and APIs that your use case calls for. 

If you’re factoring in for long-term usage, this can feed into a lower cost overall, circumventing the costs associated with third-party subscriptions, and focusing on paying for just the infrastructure you need. Of course, this also means internal security that follows the exact protocols you adhere to.

However, it’s not a perfect solution.

The caveats

We touched on cost, but that’s only true long-term, and it’s a fairly nebulous proposition that requires financial projections, taking up time and using up additional resources.

Moreover, it necessitates an internal team that needs to always stay on top of things – this includes hiring, development, maintenance, bug fixing, security, etc. – all aspects that make for a significant upfront cost that adds another level of overhead that you need to account for.

And if you really are starting from scratch, it can take months to deploy an in-house admin panel, which means that the entire rest of your business might have to sit around, waiting for things to start. This is also true for each subsequent feature that needs to be developed.

While the upsides are numerous, the downsides are just as vast. They pose great challenges that can be a true hurdle to overcome – something that can make or break even established companies, to say nothing of startups that need to be as fast, efficient, and flexible as possible.

But it’s not the only option around.

Ok, what about pre-built?

Start immediately, move faster

The pros of using a pre-built solution are even more pronounced.

For one, it’s lightning fast. Really, it’s plug-and-play. A good admin panel can get you started in minutes, and a great one has a bevy of mature features that are ready to go in a few clicks.

Furthermore, many services can be super cost-effective, particularly for small-to-medium businesses, with a set-it-and-forget-it pricing model that outweighs in-house propositions by several orders of magnitude. There’s no need for a dedicated development team, spending resources on development costs, etc.

Additionally, building an in-house admin panel does not guarantee it will look good or perform well. In contrast, third-party services usually come with intuitive UI and UX, significantly lowering the skill ceiling needed to start using them.

Throw in the fact that most offerings come with the most essential features baked in, receiving frequent updates and dedicated support, as well as being endlessly scalable, and you get a rounded feature set that immediately starts paying off.

Moreover, the best services should have most frequent integrations you might need covered, and adhering to security and compliance requirements can be just as approachable.

Still, there’s things to consider

Most of the cons of using a third-party service boil down to a lack of control and customizability. 

Many services tend to work on a what-you-see-is-what-you-get basis, and even though most features should be covered and be flexible enough to accommodate a variety of scenarios, that doesn't mean all. If you’re operating in a particularly niche industry or have a particularly unique use case or framework, you might have to work around a third-party platform, as opposed to fully making use of it.

Additionally, platforms may not be optimized to your specific needs, and integrations can be lacking, with use cases requiring makeshift solutions.

We created Rocketadmin to address precisely these shortcomings.

What we’re offering

Rocketadmin is a fully-featured admin panel, but we’ve gone above and beyond to offer a platform that doesn’t just circumvent challenges, but actively addresses them head-on.

Getting started is easy – it takes as little as 5 minutes to set up your admin panel and start benefiting from it, and we’ve also optimized for high-stress performance with large databases and use cases. We’ve made our platform usable for not just software developers or business owners, but for any member of your team, through our use of a sleek interface developed over numerous iterations through real-world testing.

In addition, we’ve solved all major shortcomings of traditional third-party admin panels.

Add your own actions

Not satisfied with our feature set and need additional functionality? Add your own! Our powerful custom actions let you shape Rocketadmin into your perfect solution

Available on any device

Rocketadmin provides the same easily accessible, fully-featured, and effortless experience across all devices – from desktop to mobile

Trace every change

Every change is logged and can be monitored, providing straightforward traceability, effective audits, and enhanced data privacy and security

Endless, effortless integrations

Our API allows for immediate integrations with any third-party service or tool you might need – no coding skills required

Build it yourself – for free

If you would prefer to self-host your own admin panel, we offer a fully free, fully-featured, and open source version of our platform – identical to the paid version

With Rocketadmin, getting set up and started is easy, and you can truly make it your own. That’s our guarantee.

Where to next?

So, choosing the right approach is a critical decision.

While building your own admin panel could be a great approach on paper, real-world applications require a great initial investment of time and resources. Depending on your needs, employing developers who are solely focused on engineering, maintaining, and troubleshooting could create an inefficient use of resources and a potential bottleneck in your operations.

Conversely, using a third-party option means significantly less resources for significantly less overhead. But that also comes with a limit on customizability and interoperability, where you have to understand and make use of a brand new, external platform, and that still takes time, effort, and potentially having to grapple with workarounds.

When creating Rocketadmin, we wanted to solve all these common pain points – customizability, traceability, usability across platforms, and simple, functional integrations with a great interface.

We’re so confident in our product’s potential to transform your business that we’re offering our product for free – no strings attached. And if you’d like additional support and an externally-hosted, hands-off approach, we also offer paid plans, starting as low as $20 for a 10-person team.

You can try it out today.