How does cpanel-based web hosting operate?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel web page hosting offerings on the present-day web page hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to annual money flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-sized marketing niche, which supplies an enormous quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing absolutely the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offers on the whole site hosting market furnish precisely the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based site hosting prices are identical. Very identical. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/web space hosting CP alternative. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200,000 web space hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200,000 "site hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled
The site hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different site hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an average chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any site hosting alternative you can select? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand web site hosting providers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brand names worldwide will give you the same cPanel webspace hosting CP and platform, named differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the contemporary website hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting corporation is an immense stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based website hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably answered most site hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Problem No.1: A stupid domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely attentive not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to remove on the web server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name 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)
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 name)
Are you growing disorientated? We undeniably are!
Negative Sign No.2: The same email folder arrangement
The electronic mail folder configuration on the hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chums strongly strengthen their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to mess things up too fatally.
Drawback No.3: A sheer deficiency of domain name administration GUIs
Do we have to mention the utter shortage of a modern domain administration menu - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, change domains' Whois information, secure the Whois details, alter/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a colossal shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we would like to point out...
Weakness Number 4: Multiple login places (minimum two, maximum three)
What about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the billing, domain name and tech support administration system? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web site hosting company. Sometimes, depending on the invoicing platform (particularly intended for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting firm is availing of, the ardent clients can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing/domain management user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support software), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Drawback Number 5: More than 120 Control Panel sections to learn... briskly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the web site hosting Control Panel. It's a fabulous idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based site hosting vendors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...