What Precisely is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the contemporary website hosting marketplace are supplied by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-scale marketing niche, which supplies a huge amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying strictly the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market supply literally the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are identical. Quite similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/hosting CP option. So, there is just one fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, remark that one...
200k "web hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded
The web hosting "variety" and the hosting "offerings" Google shows to us boil down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are just an ordinary chap who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the web site development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domains and online portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can settle on? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting companies in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique web hosting brands around the world will give you the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present website hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The upsides and downsides of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly covered all website hosting market requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Problem No.1: A ludicrous domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be very cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the web server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Determine for yourself how fantastic 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)
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 name)
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 bewildered? We clearly are!
Negative Point Number 2: The same electronic mail folder configuration
The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly enhance their faith in God when coping with the mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to mess things up too severely.
Predicament Number 3: An utter lack of domain manipulation interfaces
Do we need to refer to the entire shortage of a modern domain administration user interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domain names, change domain names' Whois information, protect the Whois details, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a great shortcoming. An unpardonable one, we would like to add...
Problem No.4: Multiple user login locations (min two, maximum three)
What about the need for another login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain and tech support administration platform? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web hosting corporation. Occasionally, based on the invoicing transaction platform (especially invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting firm is availing of, the enthusiastic customers can end up with 2 additional logins (1: the billing/domain management software; 2: the ticket support user interface), ending up with an aggregate of three login locations (counting cPanel).
Negative Aspect No.5: More than a hundred and twenty Control Panel departments to grasp... rapidly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the hosting CP. It's a wonderful idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better grasp them briskly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting firms:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...