How does cpanel-based hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based webspace hosting offerings on the present website hosting marketplace are generated by a quite insignificant marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-size business niche, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet providing precisely the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the whole site hosting market provide precisely the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web site hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web page hosting platform/web site hosting CP alternative. Thus, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web site hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
200k "hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The webspace hosting "variety" and the site hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us come down to just one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different webspace hosting brand names. Suppose you are only an average bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the web space hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and websites . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any web space hosting option you can decide upon? Sure there is, these days there are more than 200,000 webspace hosting companies out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web space hosting brand names in the world will give you literally the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on today's website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web space hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel site hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and possibly covered most web hosting market requirements. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Predicament No.1: A ludicrous domain name folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extra attentive not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder structure 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 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 baffled? We positively are!
Shortcoming Number 2: The same email folder configuration
The mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly strengthen their belief in God when coping with the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to mess things up too seriously.
Weak Point Number 3: An absolute lack of domain name administration menus
Do we need to mention the utter deficiency of a contemporary domain name administration GUI - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, edit domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, change/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" section at all. That's a big inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...
Problem Number 4: Numerous user login places (minimum two, maximum 3)
How about the demand for another login to use the billing, domain and tech support administration user interface? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based site hosting firm. Occasionally, based on the invoicing platform (particularly developed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting corporation is availing of, the avid customers can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain management software solution; 2: the ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Negative Point Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty web page hosting Control Panel areas to grasp... fast
cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the site hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to become acquainted with each of them. And you'd better get to know them quickly... That's very impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting suppliers:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...