What is cPanel Website Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the current hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing segment (when it comes to annual money flow) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which furnishes a great amount of different web hosting brands, yet supplying literally the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the whole hosting marketplace furnish literally the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/website hosting CP option. So, there is just one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, note that one...
200k "web hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The web hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us come down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are just a normal chap who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and websites. Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can decide upon? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than 200k web hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique hosting brand names in the world will give you strictly the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on today's web hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple mathematics shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably covered most web hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weak Point Number 1: A foolish domain folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra cautious not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent 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 delete on the web server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how great cPanel's domain name 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 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 name)
Are you becoming perplexed? We definitely are!
Negative Point Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder arrangement
The electronic mail folder structure on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly fortify their belief in God when handling the e-mail folders on the mail server, praying not to screw things up too irreparably.
Negative Point Number 3: An absolute lack of domain management tools
Do we need to bring up the utter deficiency of a contemporary domain name manipulation platform - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, modify domain names' Whois info, secure the Whois details, modify/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a big downside. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Drawback Number Four: Numerous login locations (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the demand for an extra login to access the billing, domain name and tech support management interface? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web hosting corporation. Sometimes, on the basis of the invoice transaction platform (particularly meant for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting company is using, the zealous customers can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain administration platform; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), winding up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Point No.5: More than one hundred and twenty hosting Control Panel sections to grasp... fast
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty departments inside the web hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to memorize each of them. And you'd better get familiar with them promptly... That's extremely insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting firms:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...