What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offers on the present web hosting market are generated by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a type of a small-sized marketing niche, which provides a big number of different web hosting brands, yet offering absolutely the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the hosting offers on the whole website hosting marketplace furnish precisely the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel web hosting prices are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is merely one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, remark that one...
200,000 "web hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet diversely 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 web hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an average chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and web pages. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any hosting variant you can choose? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand hosting suppliers out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brand names all over the world will give you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and possibly satisfied all web hosting market prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Side No.1: A dumb domain folder arrangement
If you have two or more domains, however, be extra attentive not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the hosting server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain name folder structure 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)
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 name)
Are you growing perplexed? We clearly are!
Negative Side Number Two: The same email folder arrangement
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin chums strongly increase their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.
Disadvantage No.3: An utter absence of domain name administration interfaces
Do we have to refer to the sheer lack of a contemporary domain manipulation platform - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, edit domains' Whois info, shield the Whois details, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a major shortcoming. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...
Weak Side Number 4: Many login places (min 2, maximum 3)
How about the need for an additional login to access the billing, domain name and tech support administration software? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web hosting company. At times, based on the billing transaction tool (particularly made for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting supplier is making use of, the avid customers can end up with two additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain management user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), winding up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).
Shortcoming Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel areas to memorize... briskly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a marvelous idea to become acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them fast... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting vendors:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...