I know that this topic has been discussed a numerous number of times here before (ex. vdi vs. alabanza) but this time I wanna take a slighly different approach...

What I want to know is the following: are there any other "services" that allow you to automate (partly or fully) your hosting and if so, how much do they cost? where can one get them? how do they operate? etc? You can also list your personal experiences here as well since it will definitely help people to pick the right service.

While this post might sounds a little repetous, it will definitely help a lot of startups (including me)... to start :)

Thanks in advance
Boris

There are a number of control panels which will assist you in what you are trying to do:

plesk.com
smarthostingtools.com
h-sphere.com

etc
etc

it is very important to uinderstand that all "turn key" hosting solutions have limits as far as automation is concerned.

alabanza - good automation for all aspects as well as descent financial reports

Cpanel - no billing automation at all buit skinnable and covers most of the basics of user administration

plesk - no billing automation what so ever, no skinning, and limited modules supported within the control panel

please note that you can purchase both plesk and Cpanel to run on your servers if you like. however, alabanza'a is proprietary and you must spend 900-2000 bucks per month to take advantage of it.

cost is always an issue and is often a determining factor in the selection of products and features....

you can demo:
Cpanel - http://216.74.69.227:2082/frontend/default/index.html

Plesk (in flash) - http://plesk.com/home.php

hopefully this helps :)