How does cpanel-based site hosting work?

For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offers on today's web space hosting marketplace are provided by a quite insignificant marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small business segment, which supplies an enormous quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web page hosting offerings on the whole webspace hosting market furnish literally the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other web page hosting platform/site hosting Control Panel option. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200,000 hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "web space hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed

The webspace hosting "variety" and the web page hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a regular bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website making procedures and the webspace hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domains and web sites . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any webspace hosting alternative you can opt for? Sure there is, as of now there are more than two hundred thousand site hosting firms in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique web hosting brand names worldwide will offer you precisely the same cPanel web site hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the contemporary web hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel web space hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps answered most webspace hosting market requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weakness Number One: A stupid domain folder configuration

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extremely watchful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, 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, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, 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 erase the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how great cPanel's domain name 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)
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 name)

Are you becoming confused? We absolutely are!

Downside Number 2: The very same e-mail folder arrangement

The electronic mail folder structure on the server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chums firmly enhance their belief in God when handling the email folders on the email server, hoping not to fuck things up too badly.

Problem No.3: A thorough deficiency of domain name management tools

Do we need to cite the thorough shortage of a contemporary domain management user interface - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, change domains' Whois information, secure the Whois information, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a big inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we want to point out...

Negative Aspect No.4: Numerous user login locations (min 2, maximum 3)

How about the demand for an extra login to make use of the billing, domain and technical support management platform? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based website hosting corporation. Occasionally, depending on the invoice transaction tool (particularly created for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting service provider is utilizing, the earnest customers can wind up with 2 additional logins (1: the billing/domain name management section; 2: the ticket support platform), winding up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).

Drawback No.5: More than a hundred and twenty CP menus to learn... quickly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the hosting Control Panel. It's a terrific idea to get acquainted with each of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's inordinately arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web site hosting vendors:

As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...