How does cpanel-based web hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the contemporary web page hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as reseller hosting. Reseller webspace hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing niche, which supplies an immense quantity of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing the very same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the webspace hosting offers on the whole website hosting market offer precisely the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel site hosting price tags are alike. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other site hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is just one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web space hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200k "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The website hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply a regular fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the web page creation procedures and the site hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and sites . Are you ready to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web space hosting variant you can pick? Of course there is, today there are more than 200k webspace hosting firms out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique web site hosting brands worldwide will give you the very same cPanel site hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on today's web space hosting market is... Full stop.
The site hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based website hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably covered most webspace hosting business demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Drawback Number 1: An imbecilic domain folder setup
If you have two or more domains, however, be ultra watchful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known 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 try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)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 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 getting perplexed? We positively are!
Inconvenience No.2: The very same email folder arrangement
The e-mail folder configuration on the server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly strengthen their faith in God when managing the email folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too seriously.
Negative Side Number 3: A sheer deficiency of domain name management user interfaces
Do we have to refer to the entire shortage of a modern domain name administration tool - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, modify domains' Whois details, secure the Whois information, change/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" GUI at all. That's an enormous drawback. An unpardonable one, we want to add...
Negative Point No.4: Multiple login places (min two, maximum 3)
How about the need for an extra login to make use of the invoicing, domain name and tech support administration tool? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel hosting service provider. At times, based on the invoicing system (especially tailored for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting provider is utilizing, the zealous clients can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support software), ending up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).
Shortcoming Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty web site hosting CP sections to grasp... swiftly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ menus inside the website hosting CP. It's a great idea to learn each one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them fast... That's excessively impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web page hosting service providers:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...