Explanation of cPanel Website Hosting

For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the current web hosting market are generated by a very inconsiderable business segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-scale marketing niche, which supplies an immense number of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying exactly the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offerings on the whole website hosting marketplace provide absolutely the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP option. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...

200,000 "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are merely a regular bloke who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the web site making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and websites. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique website hosting brands worldwide will give you the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the contemporary website hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and possibly met most website hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Problem No.1: A laughable domain folder setup

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extra watchful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to erase on the server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how terrific 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)
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)
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)

Are you becoming nonplussed? We categorically are!

Weakness No.2: The same email folder system

The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly reinforce their belief in God when handling the e-mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to mess things up too fatally.

Shortcoming No.3: An entire deficiency of domain administration user interfaces

Do we need to refer to the sheer absence of a contemporary domain administration GUI - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, change domains' Whois details, protect the Whois info, change/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" menu at all. That's a considerable disadvantage. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...

Weak Point No.4: Multiple login locations (min two, max 3)

What about the demand for an additional login to access the invoicing, domain and tech support management interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting company. At times, depending on the billing transaction platform (especially created for cPanel solely) the cPanel hosting provider is availing of, the devoted users can wind up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain administration GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support system), winding up with a total of three user login places (including cPanel).

Negative Point Number 5: More than 120 web hosting CP menus to become acquainted with... swiftly

cPanel offers to your attention 120+ sections inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to grasp each one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them swiftly... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.

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

As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...