Good alternatives to cPanel?

[JAB Creations]

I've encountered a few issues with cPanel which have left me high and dry. Here are the three biggies...

1.) Unless my host is responsive I can't setup SSL at all!

2.) There is no way to verify my server in regards to email with providers such as Hotmail.

3.) I forgot the third it's been so long...

Any way when looking at hosts what control panels will allow me to actually administrate my website without the hassle of calling up the web host directly like cPanel constantly requires? Sure there are some things that a host has to handle such as moving you off a server where someone keeps disabling MySQL because they don't understand that queries and infinite loops don't mix (yeah, that's happened a few times) though I don't feel I should have to contact my host every five minutes when I have to implement something like SSL or server email verification. Thoughts please?

- John

[aguimo]

I moved from cPanel to InterWorx a few years ago and never looked back.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], aguimo!

[tangor]

Look for Ensim or Cobalt services? The few cPanels I've used fit the bill... but then again I wasn't asking much from those sites at the time.

[MichaelBluejay]

One reason I use [my] host for hosting is that they wrote their own panel and it's the best in the business. That's not saying much, because most panels are really lacking. Even [my] host's panel has some staggeringly-bad design choices, but it's still the best available. It's pretty easy to find what you want, it's not very cryptic, and it doesn't take too many clicks to get anything done. And unlike pretty much every other panel out there, [my host] integrates billing and domain registrations. ([my host] is a registrar, too. Some people like to keep their host and registrar separate so they're not putting all their eggs in one basket, but others are willing to trade a little security for a lot more convenience. Your call.)

Since the [my host] panel is an in-houe thing, you can't use it at any other host. That is, if you want to enjoy that panel, you have to host at [my] host.

[edited by: phranque at 2:46 pm (utc) on Apr 6, 2010]
[edit reason] hosting specifics [/edit]

[bouncybunny]

I like CPanel hosts because moving from one to the other is easy. If a host goes bad, I simply get the new one to move the site/s across to their servers with minimal (if any) downtime.

[damon_cool]

My host uses Plesk. Not very intuitive, but it works.