How does cpanel-based web site hosting work?

For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel webspace hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are supplied by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small marketing segment, which provides an enormous number of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing the very same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the webspace hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting price tags are identical. Quite identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other hosting platform/web site hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...

Two hundred thousand "website hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely named

The webspace hosting "variety" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web space hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are simply an average chap who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site creation processes and the webspace hosting platforms, which actually power the various domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any web space hosting alternative you can pick? Sure there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand web page hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web page hosting brands in the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on today's hosting marketplace is... Period.

The site hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will occur! Less than one in 50...

The pluses and minuses of the cPanel website hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably covered all web 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 domains...

Problem Number 1: An idiotic domain name folder structure

If you have two or more domains, however, be very attentive not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to remove on the web 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 name 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. Discover for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain folder structure 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 becoming nonplussed? We categorically are!

Drawback Number 2: The very same email folder system

The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The admin guys firmly increase their faith in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to muck things up too irretrievably.

Weak Side Number Three: A complete shortage of domain name administration tools

Do we need to bring up the thorough lack of a modern domain name management GUI - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, modify domains' Whois information, secure the Whois information, edit/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" menu at all. That's an immense disadvantage. An inexcusable one, we would like to point out...

Weakness Number Four: Many login places (min two, max 3)

What about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain name and technical support administration system? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web space hosting service provider. Occasionally, based on the billing platform (principally meant for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting firm is availing of, the avid clients can end up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management system; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of three user login places (including cPanel).

Downside Number 5: More than 120 web page hosting CP departments to learn... quickly

cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 menus inside the hosting CP. It's a wonderful idea to become acquainted with each of them. And you'd better memorize them quickly... That's very impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting corporations:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...