I'm pushing our back end people to add a control panel for our users, and I was wondering how important a CP is to a potential customer, in your experience. I am also hoping to gain some wisdom and insight from the other board members. If a customer is tossed up between two hosts, does a CP sway them?

I know MY mind is made up, but I need some feedback here.

Thanks! :)

Jenn.

Jenn,

I think a CP is a definite benefit. One thing it does is it makes the consumer able to do a bunch of tasks that you would have to do otherwise by hand. As long as you have a good online manual of how to use it, you should see a decrease in your support tickets. CP's also allow consumers to feel like they actually have control of there account, where as with no CP they need to go to you for every little change.

Originally posted by ExaHost
I'm pushing our back end people to add a control panel for our users, and I was wondering how important a CP is to a potential customer, in your experience. I am also hoping to gain some wisdom and insight from the other board members. If a customer is tossed up between two hosts, does a CP sway them?


You don't want your customer to contact you just because he/she wants to setup a pop3 mail, do you? Using control panel, your work life would be much easier, I believe... If I have to choose between a host with CP and a host without one, I will definitely go for the one with CP eventhough I need to pay a bit extra for that....

Other than Control Panel for your client, Admin Control will alo be much helpful for you; it will make your life even easier to add client accounts, assigning IPs, limiting bandwith etc...

So Control Panels (admin and client) are definite yes for you.

cheers,
:beer:

as a relatively recent web host shopper...

basically
no control panel = no interest

how would they go about adding/modifying passwords... pop3... etc if they don't have a control panel?

a web host client would really hate it if it required how ever long the support takes to create a pop3 email account for them... and it gets frustrating

I have hosted with xcalibre before and i left due to the fact they didnt have a control pannel. Im not mocking xcal's service. It was second to none, real fast and good support and good uptime. However it was just a faff on to email them and say set this up, change this, add this domain etc.
Was just a pain in the ass and was slow. Having a control pannel now i can add my clients quick, change my own email etc and they change theirs. Its a blessing.


Cheers

Craig

hmm :(

Thanks to everyone's responses... excellent cases that I am forwarding on to the powers that be, but I want to ensure this thread stays intact. :) Thanks.

I'm pushing our back end people to add a control panel for our users, and I was wondering how important a CP is to a potential customer, in your experience. I am also hoping to gain some wisdom and insight from the other board members. If a customer is tossed up between two hosts, does a CP sway them?

Yes..the cp has become an important part of the features that a host can offer.
Way back when...and I will skip how long ago that was :D
Seems only a few hosts offered a control panel...now the majority do offer it.
I think it is VERY important to have it. Ive said before that it basically sells itself!

I find a Control Panel very important. I like to be able to create and delete my own email accounts, see how much space and bandwidth I'm using, and even edit a page or two if I'm away from my main computer.

I have been shopping for web hosts for several college professors' sites. Since I have been trying out several features in an attempt to find out what we want to use, I really liked the idea of having a control panel (JaguarPC). So far it has saved me (and their support staff) from having to arrange to setup and delete 5 MySQL databases(we were testing several bulletin board packages), create 15 pop email boxes, and setup 5 FTP accounts. I won't look at another host without a good control panel simply because of the level of control it gives me.

As a client I have had 3 personal accounts with 3 different providers, 2 without a CP and the last with an Alabanza CP. I am sold. I am oversold. I don't see myself ever contracting a site in the future without an adequate cp. Of course I especially consider it a must if I resell.

I am a lowlevel guy and I still want a CP. It is so easy to tweek a file through the CP rather than telenet or FTP.

Gary

One of the things I looked for in a host was a good CP. I had to choose between some and I went with the better (more options) cpanel. So, yes a CP changed my mind.

Originally posted by historian
One of the things I looked for in a host was a good CP. I had to choose between some and I went with the better (more options) cpanel. So, yes a CP changed my mind.

So what control panel did you finally choose?

cheers,
:beer:

I chose a hosting provider that offered cpanel, but as I said that was just personal preference between two different control panels.

Originally posted by historian
I chose a hosting provider that offered cpanel, but as I said that was just personal preference between two different control panels.

Oh OK... I thought when you said cpanel, you mean control panel in general... But you actually meant VDI's CPanel3. I see... :)

cheers,
:beer:

I've had it both ways. I personally love to get down and dirty in a shell and do things by hand, but it sure is nice when you are in a hurry to do things with a GUI.

As a customer, I think it is especially important since 90+% of customers don't want to mess with details. They just want it to work.

My 2 cents of course, and YMMV.

Brian