Are you interested what control panel is providing the host or you are interested more about the quality of their service ? You search for Cpanel or Direct Admin as "a must" ? or how i said ... is the same as long the service is good.
I think the two go hand in hand... IMHO If the host does not have CPanel and Fantistico, then I would not think highly of their quality. (If this was Shared Hosting...)
Not using cPanel is more proffesional it shows that you dont rely on pre made tools, most of the top websites dont use cPanel
performance is the bottom line. godaddy has a great deal for one-click wordpress blog setup and hosting, but the uptime and accessibility is a problem.
I like to have cpanel on my hosting... though i have had experience with plesk when i ran my own server ^^ but when i choose my hosting i prefer a linux host, and it's gotta have some nice bandwidth, disk space and no. of databases... not so bothered about more than 1 FTP account or mail account when i choose
I've always used cpanel, would go nuts adjusting to another, so i plan to stick with cpanel for the remainder of my life