What is cPanel Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's web hosting marketplace are furnished by a very insubstantial marketing segment (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size business segment, which furnishes a great amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing the very same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market provide absolutely the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200,000 hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200k "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely named
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are just an ordinary guy who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the web page making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domain names and web sites. Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any web hosting variant you can settle on? Sure there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting suppliers in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different hosting brands across the world will offer you the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably satisfied all hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Problem No.1: A moronic domain folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra watchful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to delete on the hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Determine for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 name)
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 name)
Are you getting confused? We doubtlessly are!
Problem Number Two: The same electronic mail folder setup
The mail folder structure on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin chaps strongly reinforce their faith in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to screw things up too harshly.
Negative Side Number 3: A total deficiency of domain name management GUIs
Do we have to point out the entire absence of a modern domain name manipulation tool - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois information, protect the Whois information, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not provide such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a vast drawback. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...
Drawback No.4: Multiple user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the need for an extra login to access the billing transaction, domain name and technical support management GUI? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting service provider. Sometimes, on the basis of the billing platform (especially conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting company is utilizing, the earnest customers can end up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration system; 2: the ticket support GUI), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login locations (counting cPanel).
Negative Point No.5: More than a hundred and twenty website hosting Control Panel sections to memorize... fast
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better pick them up quickly... That's very insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting distributors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...