How does cpanel-based web hosting work?
For your information, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel site hosting offers on the present site hosting market are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (when it comes to annual capital flow) named hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small marketing niche, which generates a great amount of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying strictly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the webspace hosting offerings on the whole site hosting market provide exactly the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web site hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/hosting CP option. Thus, there is only one fact: out of more than 200,000 webspace hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200,000 "web space hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
The site hosting "diversity" and the webspace hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Imagine you are merely a regular person who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site development processes and the web page hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and web portals . Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web page hosting alternative you can choose? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200k site hosting corporations in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique hosting brands across the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel webspace hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the present-day web page hosting market is... Full stop.
The web page hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably fulfilled most webspace hosting market demands. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Shortcoming Number 1: A laughable domain folder arrangement
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be ultra watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to delete on the hosting server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name folder setup 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)
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 growing puzzled? We doubtlessly are!
Weakness Number Two: The same e-mail folder structure
The email folder configuration on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly fortify their faith in God when dealing with the email folders on the mail server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.
Negative Point Number Three: An utter shortage of domain manipulation menus
Do we need to bring up the thorough deficiency of a modern domain name management GUI - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domains' Whois info, shield the Whois information, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's an enormous shortcoming. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...
Drawback Number Four: Multiple login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the need for an extra login to make use of the billing, domain and tech support management software solution? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web site hosting provider. Occasionally, based on the billing tool (especially developed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting service provider is utilizing, the avid customers can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoicing/domain name administration user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Weakness Number 5: 120+ Control Panel menus to grasp... briskly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the web site hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to get to know each one of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's way too insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting distributors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...