What Exactly is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the present website hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing segment, which supplies a vast quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering literally the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace supply the very same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/Control Panel choice. Thus, there is only a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...

200k "web hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled

The web hosting "variety" and the hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply a normal bloke who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and websites. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting option you can opt for? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200k website hosting companies out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ unique website hosting brand names around the world will give you strictly the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the present website hosting market is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math reveals that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a mammoth strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in 50...

The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel web hosting solution

Let's not be severe with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably fulfilled most web hosting business prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Shortcoming Number 1: A dumb domain folder setup

If you have two or more domains, however, be very cautious not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the web hosting server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how marvelous 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)
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)
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 getting nonplussed? We surely are!

Negative Aspect Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder configuration

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly enhance their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to mess things up too irretrievably.

Weak Side No.3: A total lack of domain name manipulation menus

Do we have to point out the total deficiency of a modern domain administration GUI - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois info, secure the Whois details, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a big downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...

Drawback No.4: Numerous user login places (min 2, maximum three)

What about the demand for another login to access the invoicing, domain and technical support administration software solution? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web hosting company. Now and then, depending on the billing transaction tool (principally devised for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting service provider is making use of, the enthusiastic users can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain name management software; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).

Negative Point Number Five: More than 120 Control Panel sections to get familiar with... briskly

cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a superb idea to become acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's way too impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting service providers:

As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...