Third party or customised CP?

[ashish]

Hi all,

We decided to design a totally new control panel for our customers, instead of offering them a third party one, as we feel that with a customised one we can offer much more support and answer the queries of our customers much better.

What do you think, what is your opinion on this, do you think that third party control panels are far better? Do they have a advantage over customised ones?

 

[entity512]

I have cpanel, getting it customized to my site look eventualy. I think thats better, using the 3rd party and your own layout.

 

[Masahiro]

Cpanel is my favorite - if i had the chocice between cpanel and 3rdparty (at the same price with same features) Cpanel would win every time.

 

[Masahiro]

oh, and with fantastico you will have an ace cp!

 

[dasp]

We custom built our own control panel in ASP.NET. We believe that it is better to build your own as a demonstration of your knowledge of technology, instead of using a canned hosting automation system. That is, of course, if you are a technology-centric host. For example, we specialize in ASP.NET Hosting. We also make sure that our website is programmed in ASP.NET as well.

Also, having a custom built control panel and hosting automation system powered by ASP.NET means that we can move quickly to offer new .NET technologies as they are released. Rather than, waiting for the third party vendor to do product development.

If you are not a technology-centric host (eg your focus is SME, designers..etc), then I would say using a third party control panel is fine - there are many to choose from: ensim, plesk, hsphere, cpanel - as mentioned in this thread. It will reduce costs and you can probably find support staff that already knows the control panel.

So what it boils down to is that it depends on who your target market is and if they will find a custom built control panel a value or not.

Our $0.02

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[entity512]

I think many people would prefer such likes of cpanel etc. Although you say it makes you look good, many customers dont give a rats ass, they want their hosting not some cpanel youve wasted £££ on.

 

[dasp]

I'm sure there are many customers may not care about their control panel but, I disagree. There are many that care a lot. We have many customers that thank us for not using a canned control panel and are very happy that we can demonstrate our knowledge of ASP.NET. They actually sign up because of this reason.

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[David Lindon]

I think there and pros and cons for each arguement.
Some customers may like the idea of the customized control panel, you can offer support better and it makes you look good and ofcourse no license fees!
But some people are used to and familiar with cpanel and the others which they may preffer and could reduce support tickets.

The best idea is the offer a choice between them.

 

[dasp]

It would be great to offer a choice of control panels to the customer. However, this would drain operational resources as you would need to maintain multiple systems and for any new feature launch, product update, or server upgrades you would increase QA and staff training ...etc.

I think it would be great but I do not think this is really workable.

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[entity512]

I am familair with many Cp's. We are running cpanel right now. But if we have server two on the go, that will most likely be running direct admin. We want to offer the choice to the users.