What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?

For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel hosting offerings on the present website hosting marketplace are generated by a very insubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing niche, which furnishes a great number of different web hosting brand names, yet providing precisely the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole hosting market furnish the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are identical. Very much alike. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/Control Panel choice. Thus, there is only one fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...

200,000 "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled

The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are simply a normal person who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and web portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, now there are more than 200,000 web hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ unique web hosting brands across the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the assortment on today's website hosting marketplace is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple arithmetic shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a big strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...

The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably satisfied all website hosting market demands. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Drawback Number 1: A dumb domain folder structure

If you have two or more domain names, though, be ultra 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to delete on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how marvelous 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)
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)

Are you becoming disorientated? We definitely are!

Weak Side Number 2: The very same electronic mail folder structure

The mail folder arrangement on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly fortify their belief in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.

Disadvantage Number Three: An absolute shortage of domain administration menus

Do we need to bring up the sheer absence of a modern domain name manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, change domains' Whois information, protect the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's an enormous disadvantage. An unpardonable one, we would like to point out...

Negative Aspect No.4: Many user login locations (min two, maximum three)

What about the necessity for an additional login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain and tech support administration system? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting firm. At times, depending on the invoice transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel hosting corporation is making use of, the earnest customers can wind up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain management software solution; 2: the ticket support tool), winding up with a total of 3 login locations (counting cPanel).

Weak Side Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP menus to become familiar with... quickly

cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a terrific idea to get to know each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them briskly... That's way too impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting companies:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...