How does cpanel hosting operate?
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web space hosting offers on today's web page hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to yearly cash flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller site hosting is a type of a small marketing niche, which furnishes a huge quantity of different web hosting brands, yet providing the very same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offers on the whole website hosting marketplace provide the very same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based site hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/site hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "webspace hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The webspace hosting "diversity" and the web page hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web site hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are just an ordinary chap who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and websites . Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any website hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than 200,000 site hosting companies out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique site hosting brands around the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel web site hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on the current hosting market is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math demonstrates that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting corporation is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The upsides and downsides of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps met all hosting market requirements. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Shortcoming Number 1: An imbecilic domain folder system
If you have two or more domain names, though, be extra careful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to remove on the server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known 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 try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 name)
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 growing puzzled? We categorically are!
Shortcoming Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The email folder configuration on the web server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly enhance their belief in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to fuck things up too harshly.
Downside Number 3: An entire deficiency of domain name management menus
Do we need to refer to the total shortage of a modern domain management GUI - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois info, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" tool at all. That's a gigantic inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we wish to point out...
Predicament Number 4: Multiple login places (minimum 2, max 3)
What about the necessity for an extra login to access the invoicing, domain name and technical support administration software? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web site hosting service provider. Now and then, depending on the invoice transaction platform (especially devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting distributor is utilizing, the keen customers can end up with two additional login places (1: the invoicing/domain name administration platform; 2: the ticket support software), ending up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Side No.5: More than one hundred and twenty web site hosting Control Panel sections to memorize... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a marvelous idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them fast... That's way too insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting vendors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...