How does cpanel web site hosting function?
For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel website hosting offerings on the contemporary web space hosting marketplace are supplied by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-sized marketing segment, which provides a big number of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing absolutely the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the web site hosting offers on the entire website hosting marketplace offer literally the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting price tags are alike. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other site hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web page hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, note that one...
200k "site hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The website hosting "diversity" and the site hosting "offerings" Google presents to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a normal guy who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the web site creation processes and the hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your web hosting decision? Is there any website hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique site hosting brands around the world will give you strictly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the variety on the current webspace hosting market is... Period.
The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps answered all web space hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside No.1: A laughable domain folder system
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extremely attentive 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 domains are quite easy to erase on the hosting 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 situated 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. Examine for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder structure 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)
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 getting baffled? We absolutely are!
Disadvantage No.2: The same email folder arrangement
The mail folder arrangement on the web server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly fortify their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the email server, praying not to botch things up too harshly.
Downside Number 3: An entire shortage of domain manipulation GUIs
Do we need to point out the sheer lack of a contemporary domain administration platform - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domains' Whois information, secure the Whois information, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a major predicament. An unpardonable one, we would like to add...
Weakness Number Four: Many user login locations (min 2, maximum three)
What about the demand for another login to access the billing, domain and technical support administration platform? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based site hosting vendor. Sometimes, on the basis of the invoicing transaction platform (especially designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting distributor is using, the enthusiastic clients can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing/domain name management system; 2: the ticket support user interface), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Point Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty site hosting Control Panel areas to grasp... briskly
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 menus inside the Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them swiftly... That's excessively impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting service providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...