What is cPanel Website Hosting?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the present web hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insubstantial marketing niche (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which provides an enormous quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering exactly the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace supply exactly the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are alike. Quite similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other hosting platform/hosting CP choice. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, note that one...
200k "hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely an ordinary guy who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting alternative you can opt for? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique hosting brand names worldwide will offer you the very same cPanel Control Panel and platform, named differently, with the very same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics reveals that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps satisfied most web hosting market requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Side Number 1: An idiotic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be ultra watchful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how terrific 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 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 doubtlessly are!
Negative Sign Number 2: The very same e-mail folder configuration
The email folder configuration on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly increase their faith in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to screw things up too irreparably.
Predicament Number Three: A complete lack of domain name manipulation tools
Do we have to mention the sheer absence of a modern domain name manipulation platform - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois information, secure the Whois details, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not contain such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's an enormous downside. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Side No.4: Multiple user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the demand for another login to avail of the billing transaction, domain and tech support administration interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel hosting corporation. At times, based on the invoicing system (especially invented for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting company is using, the ardent customers can end up with two additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management GUI; 2: the ticket support software), winding up with a total of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Drawback Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting CP departments to learn... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to get acquainted with each of them. And you'd better grasp them quickly... That's way too arrogant 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? Note that one as well...