How cPanel Hosting Operates
For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based Hosting offerings on the current website hosting marketplace are furnished by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as annual money flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which generates a huge amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering absolutely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offers on the entire website hosting marketplace furnish one and the very same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/website hosting CP alternative. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, note that one...
200k "Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The Hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us boil down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are only a normal fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the web page creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and websites. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any web hosting option you can pick? Sure there is, today there are more than 200,000 web hosting firms out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brand names in the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the current web hosting market is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a great strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably fulfilled most web hosting industry preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Problem No.1: An imbecilic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely watchful not to delete 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 very simple to remove on the server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder structure 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)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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 puzzled? We clearly are!
Disadvantage No.2: The same mail folder structure
The electronic mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly fortify their belief in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the email server, praying not to screw things up too seriously.
Negative Point Number 3: An absolute shortage of domain administration interfaces
Do we need to point out the entire absence of a contemporary domain name management interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a big downside. An unforgivable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Aspect No.4: Many login places (min two, maximum 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoicing transaction, domain name and tech support administration software? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel Hosting vendor. At times, based on the billing system (principally devised for cPanel only) the cPanel Hosting supplier is using, the earnest customers can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the billing transaction/domain name management menu; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), ending up with an aggregate of three user login locations (including cPanel).
Disadvantage Number 5: 120+ hosting CP menus to get to know... swiftly
cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to get to know each and every one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them briskly... That's way too arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting service providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...