How Does cPanel Hosting Function?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the contemporary web hosting marketplace are supplied by a very insignificant business niche (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small business segment, which supplies a vast amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing one and the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire website hosting marketplace supply one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are similar. Quite identical. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/website hosting CP option. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to all of us come down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are merely an ordinary guy who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the site making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the various domain names and websites. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any website hosting variant you can settle on? Of course there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brands worldwide will offer you the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the assortment on the current hosting market is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic reveals that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably met most website hosting market prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Shortcoming Number One: An imbecilic domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domain names, though, be ultra cautious not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to delete on the web hosting server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain folder configuration is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)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 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 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 getting nonplussed? We unquestionably are!
Downside Number Two: The same mail folder setup
The mail folder structure on the server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly fortify their belief in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to screw things up too badly.
Weakness Number 3: A sheer absence of domain name manipulation options
Do we need to refer to the sheer lack of a modern domain administration interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, edit domains' Whois information, secure the Whois info, modify/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" interface at all. That's an enormous drawback. An unpardonable one, we want to point out...
Problem Number 4: Numerous user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
What about the necessity for an additional login to avail of the billing, domain and tech support administration tool? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel hosting distributor. At times, based on the invoicing transaction tool (principally intended for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting distributor is availing of, the zealous clients can end up with two extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain management software; 2: the ticket support platform), winding up with an aggregate of three user login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Point Number Five: More than 120 website hosting Control Panel menus to get acquainted with... fast
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them briskly... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting service providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...