How does cpanel-based web hosting operate?
For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel site hosting offerings on the present-day web hosting marketplace are provided by a quite insubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized marketing niche, which provides an enormous amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing the very same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the whole site hosting market furnish the very same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based webspace hosting price tags are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web space hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, note that one...
200,000 "hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The web page hosting "diversity" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google presents to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are only an average bloke who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the site making procedures and the hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and websites . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web site hosting alternative you can opt for? Sure there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting firms in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ unique hosting brands all over the world will give you the very same cPanel web space hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the variety on the contemporary hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple math shows that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel site hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably satisfied all web hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Point Number 1: A laughable domain folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, though, be very attentive not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent 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 web server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain 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. Verify for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain 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 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 getting disorientated? We absolutely are!
Problem No.2: The very same e-mail folder setup
The e-mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin guys strongly increase their faith in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to fuck things up too severely.
Negative Aspect No.3: An entire absence of domain name management GUIs
Do we have to bring up the sheer deficiency of a modern domain administration menu - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois info, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a colossal predicament. An unforgettable one, we want to point out...
Negative Sign No.4: Numerous login locations (min two, maximum three)
What about the demand for another login to utilize the billing, domain and technical support administration interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based site hosting provider. Sometimes, based on the invoice transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is availing of, the earnest clients can end up with 2 additional login locations (1: the invoice transaction/domain management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support system), ending up with a total of three login places (including cPanel).
Disadvantage Number Five: 120+ site hosting CP sections to pick up... promptly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty departments inside the web site hosting CP. It's a great idea to become familiar with each one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them fast... That's very impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web site hosting service providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...