What is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel website hosting offers on today's hosting marketplace are generated by a quite inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which generates a huge quantity of different web hosting brands, yet supplying precisely the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole hosting market supply the very same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/CP alternative. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "website hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly dubbed
The website hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Assume you are simply a normal chap who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page creation processes and the hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and web portals. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting option you can choose? Of course there is, right now there are more than 200k web hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique web hosting brands around the world will give you exactly the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic reveals that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a big stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based website hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably satisfied most web hosting market prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Side Number One: An imbecilic domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be extra careful not to remove fully 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 quite simple to delete on the web server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder system 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 name)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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 becoming disorientated? We categorically are!
Shortcoming Number 2: The very same e-mail folder configuration
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly fortify their belief in God when dealing with the email folders on the e-mail server, praying not to bungle things up too badly.
Shortcoming No.3: An absolute shortage of domain name manipulation GUIs
Do we need to refer to the total absence of a modern domain name management user interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, change domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois details, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a major predicament. An unforgettable one, we want to add...
Negative Aspect Number Four: Numerous user login places (min two, max 3)
What about the demand for another login to make use of the billing, domain and tech support management platform? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based website hosting provider. Sometimes, based on the billing transaction platform (particularly created for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel website hosting corporation is making use of, the ardent clients can wind up with two additional login locations (1: the billing/domain name administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), winding up with a total of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Predicament Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty website hosting Control Panel areas to grasp... rapidly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to get acquainted with each of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's way too arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting companies:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...