Thread

Paul, I was running out the door when I first posted; I’ve edited my post above to be more thorough in response.

I have looked at Engine Hosting in the past but understood the control panel was a bit limiting compared to cPanel and it’s nice for the host to be in the UK and be able to phone support.

I do understand the desire to have phone support during local business hours, though EngineHosting does have 24/7 support via email and they are extremely responsive - as fast or faster than phone support at many companies.  Still, it’s important to some businesses.  What tools specifically do you need in cPanel?  I’ve found (before my employment with EllisLab, I should add) that once you make the leap from budget hosting / resellers to higher quality hosts, I no longer had a perceived (or real) need to be so self-managed, and in fact appreciated the time I saved by not having to mess with it.  My current bias would of course make me sing EngineHosting’s praises, but I’m sure you can find similar outfits in the UK if local is important to your business.

“.. If you’re worried about a few read queries, maybe dynamic isn’t the type of delivery you need for a project” , Ouch…
What i meant is that in most projects the customer and writers are most concerned about the text, articles and the pictures they add and edit. CSS, like HTML and PHP scares a lot of them away and makes them e-mail or phone-in wishes anyway. Maybe i should take more care of “Educating the customer”.
Thanks for your example, because besides users who publish and edit articles and a mailing here and there, i hadn’t had a need yet for Member Groups Template Editing Privileges.

Ouch…

I didn’t mean it as a dig, GDmac, just an observation. 😉  Again, the savings is likely immeasurable in a proper environment.

I manage a bunch of sites on different server platforms using everything from cPanel (Site5) to home grown (PairLite) to my own co-lo servers. What you prefer to use depends highly on what your administration needs are and how that matches up to your experience.

EngineHosting won’t provide you with all the geekiness tools in cPanel, WHM, and others laden with bells and whistles from A to Z. The end result, though, is pretty much the same. Apache, PHP, MySQL, email and usually enough other tools to get most anything done.

I’ve gone from rolling my own in a co-lo environment to bare necessities and find the former takes up more time (I don’t get paid to sys admin, I get paid to develop and manage) for less money, while the latter gives me more time to make more money.

Either way, just make sure you know what you want and need, what’s most beneficial for you and your clients, and go that direction.