What Precisely is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the contemporary web hosting market are supplied by a quite insubstantial business segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small business segment, which supplies an enormous quantity of different web hosting brands, yet supplying strictly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace offer literally the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, note that one...

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

The web hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Imagine you are merely an ordinary bloke who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can settle on? Of course there is, now there are more than 200k website hosting firms in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different hosting brands in the world will give you strictly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the current hosting market is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple math shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...

The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly answered all web hosting market preconditions. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weakness Number 1: A foolish domain folder arrangement

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra watchful not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to delete on the server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Check for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain folder setup 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)
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 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 getting baffled? We clearly are!

Weak Side Number 2: The same e-mail folder structure

The electronic mail folder structure on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly enhance their belief in God when coping with the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to botch things up too harshly.

Downside No.3: A complete absence of domain management menus

Do we have to mention the sheer deficiency of a contemporary domain administration user interface - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domain names' Whois details, shield the Whois information, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's an enormous problem. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...

Shortcoming No.4: Multiple user login locations (min two, max three)

What about the necessity for an extra login to utilize the invoice transaction, domain and tech support management GUI? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web hosting provider. Now and then, depending on the invoicing transaction platform (especially invented for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting company is using, the enthusiastic clients can end up with two additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management platform; 2: the ticket support software solution), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).

Problem Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP sections to get to know... rapidly

cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better learn them rapidly... That's way too arrogant on cPanel's side.

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

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