How does cpanel-based website hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel website hosting offers on the current hosting marketplace are furnished by a very insubstantial marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller webspace hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing niche, which furnishes an enormous amount of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing the very same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the site hosting offers on the entire web hosting market offer precisely the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are identical. Quite identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service almost no other webspace hosting platform/webspace hosting CP choice. Thus, there is only one 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...
200,000 "web space hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The web site hosting "variety" and the webspace hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different webspace hosting trademarked names. Assume you are just an average bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and web portals . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web page hosting alternative you can pick? Of course there is, today there are more than 200,000 web page hosting providers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brand names in the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the current web site hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web space hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably answered most site hosting business demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming No.1: A dumb domain folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be very cautious 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 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)
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 becoming bewildered? We surely are!
Drawback Number Two: The very same email folder setup
The electronic mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly increase their faith in God when handling the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to fuck things up too severely.
Weakness Number Three: An entire deficiency of domain manipulation sections
Do we need to bring up the absolute shortage of a modern domain name management user interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, edit domains' Whois info, shield the Whois information, change/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a big problem. An unjustifiable one, we wish to point out...
Inconvenience No.4: Many user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)
What about the demand for an additional login to use the invoicing, domain 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 company. At times, on the basis of the billing platform (particularly meant for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting distributor is availing of, the enthusiastic clients can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration interface; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).
Weakness Number Five: 120+ website hosting CP areas to become acquainted with... briskly
cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's extremely impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting distributors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...