What In Fact is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offers on the current website hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable business niche (when it comes to annual money flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small marketing segment, which provides a big quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing precisely the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting market furnish one and the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel web hosting price tags are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/website hosting CP choice. So, there is only one fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...

Two hundred thousand "web hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently named

The web hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are only an average bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page creation procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and web pages. Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any website hosting variant you can decide upon? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 web hosting suppliers in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ unique web hosting brands in the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, dubbed differently, with the very same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on today's web hosting marketplace is... Period.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all participating in

Simple mathematics reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably satisfied all web hosting market demands. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Problem No.1: A ludicrous domain name folder setup

If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be ultra cautious not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to delete on the hosting server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Determine for yourself how amazing cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 name)

Are you getting puzzled? We categorically are!

Weakness No.2: The same mail folder setup

The email folder configuration on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly reinforce their belief in God when dealing with the email folders on the mail server, hoping not to muck things up too seriously.

Downside No.3: An utter deficiency of domain name administration GUIs

Do we have to cite the sheer lack of a modern domain management interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, modify domains' Whois details, shield the Whois info, edit/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "modern" tool at all. That's a vast predicament. An unjustifiable one, we want to add...

Inconvenience Number 4: Numerous login places (min two, maximum 3)

What about the necessity for an additional login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain name and tech support administration platform? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web hosting corporation. Occasionally, depending on the billing platform (particularly designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting vendor is making use of, the enthusiastic users can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name administration software; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with a total of three user login locations (including cPanel).

Weak Point Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel areas to get familiar with... swiftly

cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the website hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them promptly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting firms:

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