Definition of cPanel Hosting
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel web hosting offers on the present-day website hosting market are supplied by a very inconsiderable business niche (when it comes to annual cash flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing niche, which provides a big number of different web hosting brands, yet offering strictly the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web hosting offers on the entire hosting market furnish one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are alike. Very similar. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/website hosting CP alternative. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...
200,000 "web hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The web hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are just a regular guy who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web site development processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domain names and web portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting option you can select? Sure there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting suppliers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brands all over the world will give you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the present-day hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a big stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps satisfied most web hosting business prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Disadvantage Number One: A laughable domain folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be very cautious not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the web server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how great 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 name)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain name)
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 getting confused? We categorically are!
Negative Point Number Two: The same mail folder setup
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The admin boys strongly increase their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the mail server, praying not to muck things up too irretrievably.
Negative Sign Number Three: An entire absence of domain administration GUIs
Do we have to mention the absolute absence of a modern domain management GUI - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domains' Whois information, shield the Whois information, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a mammoth weakness. An unjustifiable one, we want to point out...
Negative Aspect Number 4: Multiple user login places (min two, max three)
What about the necessity for an extra login to use the billing transaction, domain name and tech support administration menu? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting supplier. At times, depending on the billing system (principally intended for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting distributor is utilizing, the keen customers can wind up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain administration software solution; 2: the trouble ticket support section), winding up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Side Number Five: More than 120 hosting CP menus to memorize... promptly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a fantastic idea to pick up each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's excessively impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...