How does cpanel-based web hosting work?
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based site hosting offers on the current website hosting market are supplied by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller site hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet providing one and the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the entire web page hosting marketplace provide the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are alike. Quite identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service almost no other web space hosting platform/Control Panel choice. Thus, there is just one fact: out of more than 200k web space hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "website hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named
The web hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely an average bloke who's not very well acquainted with (as the majority of us) with the web page creation processes and the web page hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and web portals . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can decide upon? Sure there is, now there are more than 200,000 web hosting firms out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ different website hosting brands worldwide will give you absolutely the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the current web site hosting market is... Period.
The web page hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple math demonstrates that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based webspace hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably met most web site hosting business prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Inconvenience No.1: A foolish domain name folder arrangement
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra careful not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to erase on the hosting server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated 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. Verify for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 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)
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 becoming puzzled? We doubtlessly are!
Weakness Number 2: The very same e-mail folder setup
The electronic mail folder structure on the server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly increase their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to fuck things up too harshly.
Problem Number 3: A sheer shortage of domain name management menus
Do we need to mention the absolute absence of a modern domain name manipulation menu - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois info, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" GUI at all. That's an enormous downside. An unforgivable one, we want to add...
Weak Point Number 4: Many login places (minimum two, maximum 3)
What about the necessity for an additional login to make use of the invoicing, domain and technical support management system? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting supplier. Now and then, depending on the billing platform (especially made for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting vendor is utilizing, the earnest clients can end up with two extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain name management section; 2: the ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty site hosting CP departments to get acquainted with... rapidly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the site hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to pick up each of them. And you'd better get to know them promptly... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web site hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...