What is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based website hosting offerings on the contemporary web hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite inconsiderable business segment (as far as annual money flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small marketing niche, which provides a vast amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering literally the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting market provide the very same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "website hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The website hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to all of us boil down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are just a normal person who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site creation procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domain names and web pages. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting option you can pick? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting corporations in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different hosting brand names around the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the diversity on the present hosting market is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple math demonstrates that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is an immense stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel website hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably fulfilled all website hosting market requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weakness Number One: A laughable domain name folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extremely watchful not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the web server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite well known 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 try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain folder system 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 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 getting puzzled? We definitely are!
Weakness Number 2: The very same e-mail folder setup
The e-mail folder configuration on the server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin boys firmly fortify their faith in God when managing the email folders on the e-mail server, praying not to muck things up too fatally.
Negative Aspect Number 3: A total lack of domain manipulation options
Do we need to mention the entire deficiency of a modern domain name administration menu - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, change domains' Whois info, secure the Whois information, edit/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" section at all. That's a big inconvenience. An unforgettable one, we want to add...
Weak Side No.4: Multiple login places (min 2, max three)
How about the need for another login to avail of the invoicing, domain and tech support administration tool? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel website hosting provider. At times, on the basis of the billing tool (particularly tailored for cPanel only) the cPanel website hosting firm is availing of, the eager users can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain administration interface; 2: the ticket support user interface), winding up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Shortcoming Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP sections to become familiar with... swiftly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the website hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better get to know them quickly... That's inordinately arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting firms:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...