How does cpanel-based website hosting work?
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offers on the contemporary web site hosting market are provided by a very insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) named hosting reseller. Reseller web page hosting is a type of a small-scale business segment, which furnishes a great quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying absolutely the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire web space hosting marketplace offer the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web site hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web page hosting platform/CP option. Thus, there is merely a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled
The webspace hosting "variety" and the web page hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely a normal chap who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website making procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the different domain names and web portals . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web page hosting variant you can choose? Sure there is, today there are more than 200k webspace hosting providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different website hosting brand names worldwide will give you the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on today's hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The pros and cons of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably answered most hosting market demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback No.1: A laughable domain name folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be very careful not to delete 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 simple to erase on the web server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain folder setup 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 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)
Are you growing confused? We certainly are!
Disadvantage Number Two: The same e-mail folder structure
The electronic mail folder structure on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly increase their faith in God when dealing with the email folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to mess things up too irreparably.
Weak Point Number 3: An absolute deficiency of domain administration user interfaces
Do we need to cite the utter absence of a contemporary domain manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, alter domain names' Whois details, shield the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a great weakness. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...
Shortcoming Number 4: Many user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)
What about the necessity for an extra login to make use of the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management menu? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web space hosting provider. At times, on the basis of the invoicing system (particularly created for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting provider is availing of, the devoted clients can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain name management tool; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with an aggregate of three user login locations (counting cPanel).
Problem Number 5: 120+ hosting Control Panel departments to memorize... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better get to know them rapidly... That's very arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting distributors:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...