What is cPanel Hosting?

For your info, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on today's web hosting marketplace are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which supplies a huge quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying strictly the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide one and the very same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web hosting price tags are similar. Very much alike. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, note that one...

Two hundred thousand "web hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed

The web hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely a normal fellow who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and websites. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any website hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand hosting providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brand names worldwide will offer you strictly the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel web hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied most web hosting business demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Negative Point Number One: A moronic domain folder configuration

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra attentive not to remove fully 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). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how great cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 growing baffled? We undeniably are!

Weak Side Number 2: The same e-mail folder configuration

The e-mail folder configuration on the hosting server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes firmly strengthen their faith in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to muck things up too severely.

Disadvantage Number 3: An absolute shortage of domain manipulation options

Do we have to bring up the entire lack of a modern domain manipulation platform - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois information, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" interface at all. That's an immense weakness. An unforgettable one, we want to add...

Weak Point Number Four: Multiple login locations (min 2, max three)

What about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain name and tech support administration software platform? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web hosting provider. Occasionally, based on the billing transaction tool (principally designed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting service provider is using, the eager customers can wind up with two additional login locations (1: the invoicing/domain administration software platform; 2: the ticket support tool), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).

Downside Number 5: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel sections to get to know... quickly

cPanel offers to your attention 120+ departments inside the hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to get familiar with each and every one of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting providers:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...