What Indeed is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the contemporary website hosting market are provided by a quite insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to annual cash flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized business niche, which provides an immense quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying exactly the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offers on the entire website hosting market supply strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are alike. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than 200k hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...

200k "hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet differently named

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us come down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply an ordinary chap who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web page creation procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the different domain names and websites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting pick? Is there any website hosting option you can pick? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200k website hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique hosting brands all over the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the assortment on the present web hosting market is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a big stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...

The pros and cons of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be cruel with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably fulfilled most web hosting industry prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Problem No.1: A foolish domain folder configuration

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be very cautious not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to delete on the web server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Determine for yourself how great cPanel's domain name folder structure is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)
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 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)

Are you growing bewildered? We unquestionably are!

Weak Point Number 2: The very same email folder configuration

The mail folder configuration on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly strengthen their faith in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to screw things up too fatally.

Negative Aspect No.3: A thorough lack of domain management user interfaces

Do we need to point out the thorough lack of a modern domain management menu - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois info, secure the Whois info, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" GUI at all. That's an enormous disadvantage. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...

Problem No.4: Multiple login places (minimum 2, maximum three)

How about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain and technical support management tool? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting provider. Sometimes, based on the invoicing system (especially devised for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting company is using, the ardent users can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name management software; 2: the ticket support user interface), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Negative Aspect Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty website hosting CP departments to get familiar with... quickly

cPanel presents to your attention 120+ sections inside the website hosting CP. It's a superb idea to learn each of them. And you'd better learn them quickly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting suppliers:

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