Explanation of cPanel Hosting
For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the current website hosting market are generated by a quite unsubstantial business segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small marketing segment, which provides a great amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing strictly the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the entire web hosting market offer one and the very same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are alike. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
200k "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are only an ordinary person who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domain names and sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any hosting option you can opt for? Sure there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 web hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brands across the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the current website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a big strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly satisfied most web hosting business prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Point Number One: An imbecilic domain name folder setup
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely cautious not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how fabulous 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 name)
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 getting confused? We surely are!
Disadvantage Number Two: The very same e-mail folder arrangement
The e-mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin guys firmly increase their belief in God when coping with the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too irreparably.
Drawback Number Three: An utter shortage of domain management interfaces
Do we have to mention the total lack of a modern domain administration menu - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, alter domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois details, edit/create name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "modern" tool at all. That's a considerable downside. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Disadvantage Number Four: Many user login locations (minimum two, max 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to make use of the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support management software platform? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting company. At times, depending on the invoicing tool (principally invented for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting provider is availing of, the earnest customers can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing/domain management section; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Shortcoming Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP departments to get to know... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to pick up each one of them. And you'd better memorize them promptly... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...