What Indeed is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the present web hosting market are supplied by a quite insubstantial business niche (as far as annual money flow is concerned) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-scale business niche, which supplies a huge number of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing exactly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offers on the whole website hosting market supply absolutely the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are simply an average fellow who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web hosting alternative you can select? Sure there is, at present there are more than 200,000 web hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different web hosting brand names around the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the contemporary web hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a colossal stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The pros and cons of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably fulfilled all web hosting business prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback No.1: A ludicrous domain name folder arrangement
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely careful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to delete on the web server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)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)
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)
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 growing bewildered? We doubtlessly are!
Weak Side No.2: The same electronic mail folder configuration
The email folder arrangement on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin chums firmly strengthen their faith in God when handling the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to muck things up too severely.
Drawback Number 3: A sheer absence of domain manipulation options
Do we have to mention the entire lack of a modern domain administration menu - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, modify domains' Whois info, shield the Whois information, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a considerable downside. An inexcusable one, we would like to add...
Inconvenience Number Four: Many login locations (minimum 2, maximum 3)
How about the demand for an additional login to access the billing, domain name and technical support administration user interface? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based hosting service provider. At times, based on the invoicing tool (principally made for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting vendor is using, the enthusiastic customers can end up with two extra login places (1: the billing transaction/domain administration GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (counting cPanel).
Disadvantage Number 5: More than 120 web hosting CP sections to get to know... briskly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the Control Panel. It's a fine idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better get to know them briskly... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...