How does cpanel hosting function?
For your information, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel web page hosting offerings on the present web hosting market are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which provides a vast amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing exactly the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web site hosting offerings on the entire website hosting marketplace provide the very same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel webspace hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Giving those who need a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/webspace hosting CP option. Thus, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200k hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "web space hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The web hosting "variety" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a normal chap who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the website creation procedures and the site hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and online portals . Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web site hosting alternative you can choose? Sure there is, these days there are more than 200k site hosting providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ unique web site hosting brand names all over the world will give you the same cPanel web site hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the assortment on today's webspace hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The webspace hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple math shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel-based webspace hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps covered most site hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Downside Number One: A stupid domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, though, be very cautious not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the web server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name 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. Decide for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder setup 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 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)
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)
Are you becoming perplexed? We unquestionably are!
Shortcoming Number 2: The very same mail folder structure
The mail folder configuration on the web server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly enhance their faith in God when handling the mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to muck things up too severely.
Inconvenience Number Three: A total deficiency of domain administration menus
Do we need to point out the utter deficiency of a modern domain name administration user interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois information, change/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" tool at all. That's a big problem. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Negative Point Number Four: Multiple user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the demand for an additional login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support administration tool? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting supplier. At times, depending on the billing transaction system (especially invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting vendor is availing of, the eager clients can end up with two additional login places (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration tool; 2: the ticket support tool), ending up with a total of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web space hosting Control Panel menus to get to know... rapidly
cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the Control Panel. It's a great idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better pick them up briskly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting firms:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...