How does cpanel-based website hosting function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the current website hosting market are generated by a quite unsubstantial marketing segment (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small business niche, which provides a big amount of different web hosting brands, yet providing strictly the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the site hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web page hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web page hosting platform/webspace hosting CP alternative. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200,000 "web space hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The web page hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different site hosting brand names. Suppose you are only an ordinary guy who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web site creation processes and the web page hosting platforms, which actually power the different domain names and web sites . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any webspace hosting variant you can decide upon? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200k site hosting vendors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different webspace hosting brands worldwide will offer you precisely the same cPanel CP and platform, named in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the current hosting marketplace is... Period.
The site hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel website hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably covered most hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Side No.1: A stupid domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extra attentive not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how great cPanel's domain name folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is placed)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-third-domain.com (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
public_html/rebeka (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/rebeka.my-third-wife.net (a sub-domain of an add-on domain name)
Are you becoming disorientated? We surely are!
Weak Side No.2: The same electronic mail folder arrangement
The electronic mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The admin boys firmly enhance their belief in God when tackling the mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to screw things up too harshly.
Inconvenience No.3: An entire deficiency of domain name manipulation GUIs
Do we need to refer to the absolute lack of a modern domain name administration tool - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" interface at all. That's a colossal weakness. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...
Weak Point No.4: Multiple login places (min 2, maximum 3)
How about the demand for another login to make use of the invoicing, domain and tech support management GUI? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web page hosting provider. Occasionally, depending on the invoicing platform (especially designed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting distributor is utilizing, the keen customers can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain management section; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), winding up with a total of three login places (including cPanel).
Negative Aspect Number Five: 120+ web space hosting Control Panel departments to memorize... rapidly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web space hosting CP. It's a superb idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them fast... That's way too impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web site hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...