What Does cPanel Web Hosting Represent?
For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the current website hosting market are supplied by a quite inconsiderable business niche (when it comes to annual cash flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small marketing segment, which generates a big quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying one and the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace furnish the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200k "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are merely an average chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and web portals. Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any hosting option you can decide upon? Of course there is, at present there are more than 200k web hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique hosting brand names all over the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, named differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the assortment on the contemporary web hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple mathematics shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a great strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be cruel with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps met all website hosting industry prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Problem No.1: A dumb domain folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be very cautious not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to remove on the server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed 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. Verify for yourself how terrific 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)
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 bewildered? We absolutely are!
Negative Sign No.2: The very same mail folder system
The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly reinforce their faith in God when coping with the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to botch things up too harshly.
Negative Aspect Number 3: A complete shortage of domain manipulation menus
Do we have to bring up the sheer absence of a contemporary domain name management user interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois info, secure the Whois info, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a gigantic predicament. An unpardonable one, we wish to add...
Disadvantage No.4: Many login places (minimum two, maximum 3)
How about the demand for an additional login to access the invoicing, domain name and tech support administration tool? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel hosting company. At times, depending on the invoice transaction platform (especially tailored for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting company is utilizing, the avid users can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain management GUI; 2: the ticket support user interface), ending up with an aggregate of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: 120+ website hosting Control Panel sections to become familiar with... quickly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 departments inside the hosting CP. It's a superb idea to become familiar with each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them fast... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting corporations:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...