What Indeed is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the contemporary web hosting market are generated by a very inconsiderable business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small-scale marketing niche, which generates a huge amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing exactly the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire hosting market provide strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "web hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named

The web hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply an ordinary chap who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and web portals. Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web hosting alternative you can settle on? Sure there is, today there are more than 200,000 web hosting corporations out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique website hosting brands all over the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the variety on the current web hosting marketplace is... Period.

The web hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in

Simple math reveals that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably answered most web hosting market prerequisites. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Predicament Number One: A foolish domain name folder configuration

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extremely watchful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the web hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Check for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder structure 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)

Are you getting puzzled? We undoubtedly are!

Negative Side Number Two: The same e-mail folder arrangement

The mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly enhance their faith in God when coping with the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to mess things up too gravely.

Inconvenience No.3: An utter deficiency of domain administration menus

Do we need to point out the utter shortage of a modern domain manipulation menu - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, edit domain names' Whois details, secure the Whois info, change/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" interface at all. That's a colossal downside. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...

Problem Number Four: Multiple user login places (minimum 2, max 3)

What about the necessity for another login to make use of the invoicing transaction, domain name and tech support administration system? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web hosting supplier. Now and then, depending on the invoice transaction tool (especially invented for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting service provider is making use of, the enthusiastic customers can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing/domain name administration platform; 2: the ticket support software), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).

Weakness No.5: More than one hundred and twenty website hosting CP departments to learn... swiftly

cPanel presents to your attention 120+ menus inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a fabulous idea to become acquainted with each of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them briskly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.

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

As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...