What Indeed is cPanel Website Hosting?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel hosting offers on the contemporary web hosting market are supplied by a very insubstantial business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-scale business segment, which supplies an immense number of different web hosting brand names, yet offering the very same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the entire web hosting market supply one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP alternative. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
Unlimited bandwidth
1 website hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The hosting "variety" and the hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us come down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are merely a normal fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website making processes and the hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and web pages. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any web hosting option you can opt for? Sure there is, at present there are more than 200,000 web hosting corporations in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ unique website hosting brand names all over the world will give you strictly the same cPanel CP and platform, named differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the contemporary web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math demonstrates that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an enormous stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be cruel with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably covered most web hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weakness Number 1: An idiotic domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, though, be extra watchful not to delete entirely 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 simple to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name 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 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 name)
Are you becoming confused? We clearly are!
Shortcoming Number 2: The very same mail folder configuration
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes firmly fortify their belief in God when handling the e-mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to botch things up too fatally.
Negative Point Number 3: A sheer lack of domain manipulation GUIs
Do we have to mention the absolute deficiency of a modern domain name management GUI - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, modify domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois details, edit/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" tool at all. That's a gigantic inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...
Negative Aspect No.4: Many login places (minimum two, maximum three)
How about the necessity for an additional login to make use of the billing, domain name and tech support administration interface? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting vendor. At times, based on the invoicing transaction platform (principally designed for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting corporation is availing of, the zealous users can end up with two additional login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain management tool; 2: the ticket support menu), ending up with an aggregate of three user login locations (counting cPanel).
Weakness Number 5: 120+ hosting Control Panel departments to get to know... swiftly
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 departments inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a terrific idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better get familiar with them swiftly... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting suppliers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...