What Does cPanel Hosting Signify?
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel web hosting offers on today's web hosting market are furnished by a very unsubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-size marketing niche, which supplies a vast quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing strictly the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market supply strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting prices are alike. Quite identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The web hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offerings" Google presents to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are only an ordinary person who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website making procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and web portals. Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Sure there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands around the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the present web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple math demonstrates that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably fulfilled all hosting business requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Drawback Number One: An imbecilic domain name folder arrangement
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra cautious not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the web hosting server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed 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. Verify for yourself how good cPanel's domain name folder configuration 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 name)
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 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 growing confused? We categorically are!
Negative Sign Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder setup
The electronic mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly enhance their belief in God when handling the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to screw things up too seriously.
Negative Point No.3: An entire lack of domain manipulation options
Do we need to mention the absolute shortage of a modern domain administration tool - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, alter domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois info, edit/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" interface at all. That's an enormous problem. An unjustifiable one, we would like to add...
Disadvantage Number 4: Multiple login places (min two, maximum three)
What about the demand for an additional login to access the invoicing, domain and technical support administration platform? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web hosting provider. Sometimes, depending on the invoicing platform (particularly invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting service provider is availing of, the eager clients can wind up with two extra login locations (1: the billing/domain name management software solution; 2: the ticket support software solution), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Downside Number 5: 120+ web hosting CP departments to get familiar with... rapidly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the web hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to become familiar with each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them quickly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting service providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...