What is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel Web Hosting offers on the present-day website hosting market are supplied by a very inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to yearly cash flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing niche, which furnishes a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet supplying literally the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the whole hosting market offer literally the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Web Hosting prices are alike. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...
200,000 "Web Hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed
The Web Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are only a normal fellow who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and online portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can opt for? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200,000 web hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different website hosting brands around the world will give you exactly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the assortment on today's website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The Web Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel-based Web Hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably satisfied most web hosting business prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Side Number One: A laughable domain name folder arrangement
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extra cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to erase on the server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 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 confused? We certainly are!
Predicament Number 2: The same mail folder structure
The electronic mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes firmly strengthen their faith in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to botch things up too seriously.
Weakness Number 3: A total absence of domain administration interfaces
Do we need to point out the complete deficiency of a modern domain manipulation platform - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, alter domain names' Whois details, secure the Whois info, alter/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not provide such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a great drawback. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...
Negative Side No.4: Many login locations (min 2, max three)
What about the need for an extra login to avail of the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management user interface? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel Web Hosting vendor. Now and then, based on the invoicing transaction tool (especially made for cPanel solely) the cPanel Web Hosting vendor is availing of, the eager clients can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain administration software solution; 2: the ticket support interface), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Point No.5: More than a hundred and twenty hosting CP sections to memorize... swiftly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ departments inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them briskly... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Web Hosting suppliers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...