How does cpanel hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offerings on today's web space hosting market are generated by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to yearly cash flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web space hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing niche, which supplies an enormous number of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing exactly the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the entire site hosting marketplace furnish the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Quite identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/website hosting CP alternative. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...
200,000 "web space hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The web site hosting "variety" and the site hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web site hosting brand names. Suppose you are just an average person who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website development processes and the webspace hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and web sites . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any hosting alternative you can select? Sure there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting service providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ different webspace hosting brand names worldwide will offer you precisely the same cPanel web space hosting CP and platform, named in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the present site hosting market is... Full stop.
The site hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel web site hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably met most website hosting business prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming No.1: An idiotic domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be very careful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to delete on the server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name 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 name)
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 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 growing confused? We certainly are!
Downside No.2: The same e-mail folder setup
The email folder structure on the server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly fortify their faith in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.
Negative Point No.3: A complete lack of domain name management user interfaces
Do we have to bring up the complete shortage of a contemporary domain name management menu - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois information, protect the Whois details, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's an immense downside. An inexcusable one, we want to add...
Weak Side Number 4: Numerous user login places (min 2, maximum three)
What about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain name and technical support management interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel webspace hosting distributor. At times, depending on the billing tool (principally devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting distributor is utilizing, the earnest clients can wind up with two additional login locations (1: the billing/domain name administration interface; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), ending up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience No.5: More than a hundred and twenty web page hosting CP areas to memorize... promptly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to become acquainted with each of them. And you'd better get to know them quickly... That's quite arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web site hosting service providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...