How Does cPanel Website Hosting Operate?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel hosting offerings on the present website hosting market are furnished by a very inconsiderable business segment (as far as annual money flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-size marketing niche, which furnishes an immense number of different web hosting brands, yet supplying absolutely the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market provide one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are alike. Very identical. Giving those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/CP choice. So, there is just one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, mind that one...
200,000 "hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are merely a normal person who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page development processes and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and websites. Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any hosting alternative you can pick? Of course there is, right now there are more than 200,000 hosting vendors in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique hosting brands worldwide will give you precisely the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on today's hosting market is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps met all web hosting business demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Disadvantage Number 1: A stupid domain name folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be extra attentive not to remove entirely 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the web server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular 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 remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Determine for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain name folder system 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)
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)
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 becoming perplexed? We unquestionably are!
Problem No.2: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The e-mail folder configuration on the web server is literally the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly reinforce their faith in God when handling the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to screw things up too badly.
Weak Point Number Three: A sheer absence of domain manipulation options
Do we need to point out the complete lack of a modern domain administration menu - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, change domain names' Whois details, secure the Whois information, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a mammoth downside. An unpardonable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Side Number 4: Many login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)
What about the necessity for an extra login to make use of the billing transaction, domain and tech support administration user interface? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel hosting company. Occasionally, based on the billing transaction tool (especially tailored for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting vendor is utilizing, the ardent users can wind up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain management software platform; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Sign No.5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel menus to get acquainted with... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a fine idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them fast... That's way too impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting companies:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...