One of the reason I stick with hosted Cpanel solutions is because of the provided access via SSH. (An option which some hosting providers disable, but I never even consider signing up with those providers.) SSH allows me to have a lot more power in terms of administration -- you can't get much more control over your Linux environment than having shell access.

Sometimes, however, SSH faces me against special problems which Cpanel users never see. The real problem is that it takes my brain a moment to realize that the problem is that sometimes Cpanel is safer or even superior to use for certain administration tasks, if only because of the configurations specific to Cpanel servers. For example, if you are going to use spamassassin to filter out your spam, be sure to only use the shell to configure your user_prefs file or Cpanel to configure your preferences, but never use both. If you do, you'll end up with a horribly mangeled user_prefs file.

Another instance, and one which has got me several times now, happens with permissions. Often directories or files on the server will get set, in one manner or another, so that the directories or files become inaccessible from the command line. Attempting to chmod can sometimes fail in these situations. The solution? Duh - use the Cpanel file manager utility to chmod the problematic folders or files.