I agree with andychev, but didnt want to say it first (g)

I too inherited a CF job on 2 occasions but never got good enough to see what the fanatics are raving about. And the 2 CF programmers I know are fanatics. So maybe it is really good, but....
As you pointed out, you are stuck with sending clients to a CF host, and worse --- if your client ever gets to the point they need a dedicated server -- ouch! Now THEY have to purchase it! And what if they grow beyond that? Its a per server, not a per domain license I believe?
Sure some would argue that if they get that big they can afford it, but people always seem to equate growth with success until they actually start growing and get a rude awakening when their costs tend to grow faster than their gross profits.

Back in my dBase days, I used a product that was far superior to dBase and all the other dBase clones out there. After much development of my libraries, come to find out the product was bought and killed. So, licking my wounds, I put up my white flag, cut my losses and moved to Foxpro, the microsoft version of dBase.

I would be a little leary of jumping on CF myself, because at some point I would be suspicious that Macromedia may decide to shelve it. It can't be generating that many sales, but I could be wrong.

I went PHP because of its wide user base. Its not going away any time soon.

And then I am a PHP fanatic so my views may be skewed.