How does cpanel-based web hosting operate?
For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel web hosting offers on the contemporary hosting marketplace are provided by a very insubstantial marketing niche (when it comes to annual capital flow) named reseller hosting. Reseller web site hosting is a type of a small-size business segment, which generates a vast quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering precisely the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web site hosting offerings on the entire website hosting market provide the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web space hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The webspace hosting "variety" and the web page hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Assume you are just a normal fellow who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web page hosting option you can opt for? Of course there is, these days there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brand names worldwide will offer you absolutely the same cPanel site hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the current site hosting market is... Full stop.
The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a great stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly satisfied all website hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Side Number 1: A foolish domain name folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra cautious not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to remove on the server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Decide for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 name)
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)
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 perplexed? We definitely are!
Negative Point Number Two: The same e-mail folder arrangement
The electronic mail folder structure on the server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly enhance their belief in God when managing the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to botch things up too irretrievably.
Weak Side Number Three: A complete lack of domain management user interfaces
Do we have to refer to the total absence of a contemporary domain name administration menu - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois details, shield the Whois details, edit/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" menu at all. That's a big inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we want to add...
Downside No.4: Numerous login locations (min 2, max 3)
How about the necessity for an additional login to utilize the invoice transaction, domain and tech support management user interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web space hosting provider. Now and then, depending on the invoice transaction tool (particularly devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting corporation is using, the earnest users can end up with 2 extra login places (1: the billing transaction/domain management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Point No.5: More than 120 Control Panel menus to grasp... briskly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the webspace hosting CP. It's a great idea to get familiar with each and every one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them rapidly... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web page hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...