How does cpanel-based site hosting function?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the current webspace hosting marketplace are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale business segment, which provides a huge amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering literally the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the webspace hosting offerings on the entire web page hosting marketplace furnish the very same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are similar. Very identical. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other webspace hosting platform/web hosting CP option. So, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200,000 site hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
The web space hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are only a regular fellow who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site creation processes and the web page hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and websites . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any hosting alternative you can choose? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 web space hosting corporations in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different web page hosting brands all over the world will offer you the same cPanel web site hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on the present web hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based webspace hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably covered all web space hosting market requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Side No.1: A ludicrous domain name folder configuration
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be very watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to remove on the server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder configuration 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 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 perplexed? We doubtlessly are!
Drawback Number Two: The same mail folder configuration
The e-mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin boys firmly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the email folders on the email server, hoping not to mess things up too irretrievably.
Negative Side Number Three: A thorough absence of domain administration tools
Do we have to mention the utter absence of a modern domain name management platform - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domains' Whois information, secure the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a mammoth downside. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Downside Number Four: Numerous user login locations (min two, max three)
How about the necessity for an extra login to make use of the invoicing, domain and tech support administration software? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web site hosting firm. Occasionally, depending on the invoicing system (principally tailored for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting service provider is availing of, the eager clients can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoicing/domain administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support system), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Weak Side Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty CP areas to pick up... swiftly
cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the webspace hosting CP. It's a fine idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better pick them up briskly... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web page hosting companies:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...