How does cpanel-based web site hosting function?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on today's web space hosting marketplace are provided by a quite insignificant marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small-size business segment, which generates an immense amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the site hosting offers on the entire hosting market furnish one and the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other webspace hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web page hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The web site hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us come down to just one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web page hosting brand names. Assume you are simply an ordinary fellow who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the website making procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domain names and online portals . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can opt for? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 web hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different web page hosting brands worldwide will give you the same cPanel web space hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on today's site hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting company is an enormous stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel webspace hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps covered most web site hosting market demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Point Number 1: A ludicrous domain folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be very watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the web hosting server, since they all are set up 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. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder configuration 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)
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 getting perplexed? We absolutely are!
Disadvantage No.2: The very same electronic mail folder system
The electronic mail folder structure on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the mail folders on the email server, hoping not to muck things up too seriously.
Negative Aspect No.3: A complete lack of domain manipulation user interfaces
Do we have to point out the thorough absence of a modern domain management interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, modify domains' Whois details, secure the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" tool at all. That's a great disadvantage. An inexcusable one, we would like to point out...
Disadvantage Number 4: Many login places (min 2, max three)
What about the necessity for an additional login to use the billing, domain and technical support administration interface? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based webspace hosting vendor. At times, based on the billing system (particularly developed for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting supplier is using, the earnest users can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain administration platform; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Aspect No.5: More than a hundred and twenty webspace hosting Control Panel sections to memorize... promptly
cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 menus inside the web page hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to memorize each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them rapidly... That's quite arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel webspace hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...