How Does cPanel Web Hosting Function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offerings on today's web hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insubstantial marketing niche (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-sized business niche, which generates a great quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing literally the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish one and the very same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
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 reveals to all of us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely an ordinary guy who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the site development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and online portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any website hosting option you can choose? Sure there is, at present there are more than 200k website hosting suppliers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different web hosting brand names in the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the present-day hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a gigantic stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably fulfilled most web hosting market demands. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Inconvenience Number 1: An imbecilic domain folder setup
If you have two or more domains, though, be very attentive not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to delete on the web server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Check for yourself how fantastic 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)
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 name)
Are you growing puzzled? We doubtlessly are!
Negative Side No.2: The very same mail folder system
The e-mail folder structure on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chaps strongly reinforce their belief in God when handling the mail folders on the email server, praying not to muck things up too seriously.
Negative Sign Number Three: An absolute deficiency of domain administration menus
Do we have to point out the thorough deficiency of a contemporary domain manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domain names' Whois details, shield the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a vast drawback. An unforgettable one, we want to add...
Weak Point Number Four: Multiple user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)
How about the need for an extra login to use the billing, domain name and technical support administration software? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web hosting service provider. Sometimes, on the basis of the invoice transaction tool (particularly invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting vendor is utilizing, the earnest clients can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain management section; 2: the ticket support software platform), winding up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).
Weak Side Number Five: More than 120 web hosting CP areas to become acquainted with... promptly
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 menus inside the web hosting CP. It's a fabulous idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...