cPanel Hosting Disclosed
For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel hosting offers on the contemporary website hosting marketplace are furnished by a very insignificant marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-size business niche, which furnishes an enormous number of different web hosting brand names, yet offering absolutely the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market provide the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are similar. Very much alike. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200,000 "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an ordinary chap who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting alternative you can choose? Sure there is, at present there are more than 200k website hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different website hosting brand names around the world will offer you the very same cPanel CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the current web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple math demonstrates that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably covered all web hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weakness Number 1: A ludicrous domain folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extremely careful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to delete on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 name)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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 name)
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 confused? We absolutely are!
Shortcoming Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The e-mail folder structure on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly enhance their belief in God when managing the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to botch things up too severely.
Drawback No.3: A sheer absence of domain name manipulation GUIs
Do we need to mention the total deficiency of a modern domain manipulation tool - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domain names, alter domain names' Whois info, secure the Whois info, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" tool at all. That's an immense weakness. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...
Drawback No.4: Multiple login places (min two, max three)
What about the demand for another login to use the billing, domain name and tech support management GUI? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting distributor. At times, based on the invoice transaction platform (principally conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting company is making use of, the avid users can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management software platform; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Weakness Number 5: 120+ web hosting CP sections to get familiar with... fast
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the hosting Control Panel. It's a marvelous idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them rapidly... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting suppliers:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...