What Does cPanel Hosting Represent?
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based website hosting offers on the current web hosting market are furnished by a very inconsiderable business niche (when it comes to annual money flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which provides a great number of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying precisely the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire website hosting marketplace furnish the very same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other hosting platform/website hosting CP option. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "website hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named
The website hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are just a normal guy who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and web pages. Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any website hosting option you can pick? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 web hosting service providers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brands across the world will give you the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the present website hosting market is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel website hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps satisfied all website hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback Number 1: A foolish domain name folder arrangement
If you have two or more domain names, though, be extra attentive not to erase fully 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 domains are quite easy to remove on the hosting server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder arrangement 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 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)
Are you becoming bewildered? We absolutely are!
Negative Point Number 2: The same mail folder setup
The email folder arrangement on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin guys firmly reinforce their belief in God when dealing with the mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too harshly.
Negative Point No.3: A complete absence of domain administration sections
Do we have to refer to the sheer lack of a contemporary domain management platform - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois information, shield the Whois details, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" interface at all. That's a great disadvantage. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...
Inconvenience Number Four: Multiple login locations (minimum 2, maximum 3)
What about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the billing transaction, domain name and technical support administration menu? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based website hosting corporation. At times, based on the invoice transaction system (principally devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel website hosting supplier is utilizing, the devoted users can end up with two extra login places (1: the billing/domain name management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with a total of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Negative Aspect Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting CP departments to learn... swiftly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to pick up each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them rapidly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...