Hello everyone. I'm new. :)

I've just spent all day searching the archives to try and help my company with our control panel decision. Must say I have been thoroughly put off CPanel, even though graphical customisation is a *very* important feature for us.

Plesk looks featureless and bland, Ensim/Sphere too expensive, H-Sphere 2.0 was in the running for a while but the one that most appeals right now is Smart Hosting Controller. I have been chatting to the developer today and not only was he very helpful but his replies were FAST. Always a good sign.

So, anyone use Smart Hosting Controller? http://www.smarthostingtools.com . It seems to have all the features we need, *plus* a lot of automation features you would not expect for a one-off fee pricing structure. Seems too good to be true - am I missing something?!

Hope you can help - thanks guys.

Sally

http://webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=19688

Smarthosting controller is buggy and I has never kept a single date for a product(I have been told about 5 dates for releases one over a month ago and still not up). Plesk is bland, but not featureless, thats what I ended up buying also because I could never use smarthostingcontroller.

Hi David,

Thanks for the reply. Can I ask what you found buggy about SHC and how come you could never use it?

Thanks

Well, I started with the linux version 3 months ago. That just had problems all over. Then I waited for the freebsd version, which is acouple months late now. The only bug I know of for the linux version that someone said to me is when a email password is changed, it like changes other email accounts to. Bandwidth tracking also does not work.

I checked out the above mentioned problems with Arnoud and was told "these were problems the older version had, however they have all been addressed with the release of the latest version. FreeBSD is now also fully supported."

To me it still looks like a good possibility. To be able to get near instant answers from the company is a bonus that should never be overlooked. I don't know for sure, but I feel that if we had problems with the program we would get answers pretty soon.

I have also looked into Sphera and to be honest their sales team have been nothing short of a joke. It will be days before I am allowed to see a live demo, and in the mean time I am being asked whether $5000 seems like a good deal for a product I have yet to experience! Anyone else ever tried to deal with them?!:confused:

I guess the best thing you can do is email and ask for a demo to see that everything is working.