cPanel Website Hosting Explained
For your info, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the current web hosting market are supplied by a very insubstantial marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-size marketing segment, which generates a huge number of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing strictly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offers on the entire website hosting marketplace provide strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The web hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply an average guy who's not very well acquainted with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and sites. Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can choose? Sure there is, these days there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands around the world will give you the very same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics reveals that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly covered most web hosting industry demands. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weak Point No.1: A ludicrous domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra watchful not to erase 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to delete on the web server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder configuration is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)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 growing bewildered? We positively are!
Inconvenience No.2: The very same email folder system
The email folder structure on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly fortify their faith in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to mess things up too gravely.
Shortcoming Number Three: An utter deficiency of domain name management sections
Do we have to mention the utter deficiency of a contemporary domain manipulation GUI - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, edit domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, edit/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a big downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...
Weak Side No.4: Many user login places (minimum 2, max three)
How about the necessity for an additional login to access the invoice transaction, domain name and tech support management software? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web hosting corporation. Occasionally, on the basis of the invoice transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting service provider is utilizing, the earnest customers can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain management user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support software platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Weak Point Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty CP areas to grasp... fast
cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a wonderful idea to become familiar with each of them. And you'd better grasp them fast... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting firms:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...