What is cPanel Website Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on today's hosting marketplace are provided by a quite unsubstantial business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-size business niche, which furnishes a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market supply one and the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is only one fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded
The web hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Suppose you are just a normal bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web site creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and websites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting pick? Is there any website hosting alternative you can settle on? Sure there is, these days there are more than 200,000 web hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brand names around the world will offer you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on the current web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting corporation is a big strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps fulfilled all website hosting business requirements. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Aspect Number 1: A moronic domain name folder configuration
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extra cautious not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to delete on the server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name folder configuration 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 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)
Are you growing perplexed? We undeniably are!
Inconvenience Number 2: The very same e-mail folder setup
The email folder arrangement on the web hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin blokes strongly reinforce their faith in God when dealing with the email folders on the email server, hoping not to bungle things up too badly.
Negative Sign Number 3: A thorough shortage of domain name manipulation interfaces
Do we have to mention the thorough deficiency of a contemporary domain management GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, change domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois information, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a vast weakness. An inexcusable one, we would like to add...
Shortcoming Number Four: Multiple user login places (minimum two, max 3)
What about the need for an extra login to access the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management software platform? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting supplier. Occasionally, based on the billing transaction tool (especially created for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting firm is availing of, the eager clients can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name administration platform; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), ending up with an aggregate of three login places (counting cPanel).
Negative Side Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty hosting CP departments to get acquainted with... promptly
cPanel offers to your attention 120+ areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better grasp them promptly... That's quite arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting firms:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...