As far as I understand (I just lowly tech, not an admin) , the cpanel X3
theme presents some issues when used on the type of servers that Lunarpages uses, and the Admin team has chosen to currently not allow this as it may present security and stability concerns.
The LPCP control panel, while currently missing some of the features of Cpanel, is having extra features added to it all the time, for example
* - removed by Mitch says there's no file manager, however there most definitely is at this time.
The use of LPCP, also allows our admin team to create/add new features that are not available in cpanel.
One area that this has helped is with our China based users who have been blocked due to "The Great Firewall of China" (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China), where the government of China is actually blocking users in China from being able to access websites.
On cpanel, if someone who was blocked got a Dedicated IP address, their site may be viewable by users, however usually email would not be able to function.
In most cases, we would also have to move these users to other servers so that they can have full functionality, however due to the way that the Chinese government blocks the sites (whole servers rather then just domain name) this could potentially result in a large number of servers ending up blocked, which would affect anyone who has viewers/users who are based in China or other countries that go through China systems.
With these cases, now that we can move them to LPCP, with the dedicated IP they can have users able to see their site, and since on LPCP there is a dedicated email server with another/separate IP address, they can now also receive email from users who are in China.
Another benefit of LPCP over Cpanel, is if there is a Cpanel exploit released, generally the Admin team must wait on the creators of Cpanel to provide an update to Cpanel to block against it. This can take time, however with LPCP our admin teams can generally get fixes out quicker then we are able to receive them from Cpanel.
Also, since a large number of people around the world use cpanel / have access to cpanel code, this means that its easier for others to create/find exploits in Cpanel. As LPCP is built "inhouse" , and used only by Lunarpages, the chance of exploits being generated may be significantly lower.
While a large number of hosts still provide cpanel, I have been with many before coming to LP where I host/manage multiple shared (both my own and many of my g/f's clients) and a VPS, many webhosts are now moving to "inhouse" created control panels so that they are not tied to having to rely on the developers of cpanel for features/fixes.
Both Cpanel and LPCP have their benefits and drawbacks, and as I have used both LPCP, Cpanel, and plesk (currenlty only on windows accounts), I have seen some differences in how accounts respond. In some cases, LPCP responds a little bit faster in some cases then Cpanel.
While LPCP may be in its "Infancy" as a new type of control panel, the potential for LPCP is great, and new features are being added all the time.
