How does cpanel web hosting operate?
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel web site hosting offers on the contemporary web page hosting marketplace are furnished by a very insignificant marketing segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web page hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing niche, which generates a huge number of different web hosting brand names, yet providing the very same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the web page hosting offers on the whole webspace hosting marketplace supply strictly the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web site hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other site hosting platform/Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named
The website hosting "diversity" and the web site hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely an average chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site development processes and the web page hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and web sites . Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any site hosting alternative you can decide upon? Of course there is, today there are more than 200,000 web page hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web site hosting brands worldwide will give you strictly the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the assortment on the contemporary webspace hosting market is... Period.
The web page hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel site hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably fulfilled all web page hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weakness Number One: A foolish domain folder setup
If you have two or more domains, however, be ultra careful not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Examine for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 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 getting bewildered? We categorically are!
Negative Sign Number 2: The very same mail folder system
The e-mail folder structure on the web server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The admin chaps firmly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to fuck things up too badly.
Weakness No.3: An absolute shortage of domain name management user interfaces
Do we need to refer to the sheer lack of a modern domain management GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, change domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, modify/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" menu at all. That's a great drawback. An unjustifiable one, we want to point out...
Shortcoming No.4: Many login locations (min 2, max three)
What about the demand for an extra login to use the billing transaction, domain name and tech support management system? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web site hosting supplier. Now and then, on the basis of the billing transaction system (especially designed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting company is using, the avid users can end up with two extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain administration software solution; 2: the trouble ticket support software), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty CP areas to learn... promptly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ areas inside the webspace hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's way too insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting service providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...