How cPanel Web Hosting Functions
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel hosting offers on the contemporary hosting market are provided by a very insubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small business niche, which generates a vast amount of different web hosting brands, yet supplying literally the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace furnish the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are only a regular bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the website making procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domain names and web sites. Are you ready to make your web hosting choice? Is there any website hosting option you can choose? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200k web hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique web hosting brands worldwide will give you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the present website hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably covered most web hosting market requirements. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback Number One: A laughable domain name folder system
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely attentive not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the server, since 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 is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder system 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 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 name)
Are you becoming perplexed? We unquestionably are!
Negative Point No.2: The same email folder structure
The mail folder structure on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too fatally.
Problem Number 3: A sheer deficiency of domain name manipulation tools
Do we have to point out the entire deficiency of a modern domain name administration user interface - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domains' Whois information, shield the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not furnish such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's an enormous drawback. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Inconvenience Number Four: Numerous login locations (minimum 2, maximum three)
What about the need for an extra login to avail of the invoicing, domain and technical support management user interface? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel hosting service provider. Occasionally, depending on the invoice transaction tool (particularly invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel hosting corporation is using, the zealous users can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoice transaction/domain name administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support section), ending up with an aggregate of three login locations (counting cPanel).
Drawback Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty website hosting Control Panel areas to become acquainted with... briskly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 departments inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to become familiar with each and every one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them briskly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...