How does cpanel-based web site hosting operate?

For your information, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel website hosting offers on the present hosting marketplace are generated by a very unsubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller site hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which generates a vast number of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing exactly the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web space hosting offerings on the entire web site hosting marketplace supply exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web site hosting price tags are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is only one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...

200,000 "web page hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled

The site hosting "variety" and the web page hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different webspace hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply a normal chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website creation procedures and the web space hosting platforms, which actually power the various domain names and web sites . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any website hosting variant you can opt for? Sure there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting service providers in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands around the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel webspace hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the assortment on the current webspace hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math shows that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...

The upsides and downsides of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and possibly answered most web space hosting business requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Downside Number 1: A foolish domain name folder system

If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra watchful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous 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 delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how good cPanel's domain name folder configuration 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)
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 nonplussed? We undeniably are!

Negative Side Number 2: The same mail folder arrangement

The mail folder configuration on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly increase their faith in God when handling the email folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to bungle things up too irreparably.

Weak Point Number Three: An utter shortage of domain management tools

Do we need to mention the entire absence of a contemporary domain administration interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois information, edit/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" menu at all. That's a big disadvantage. An unpardonable one, we wish to point out...

Drawback Number 4: Multiple login places (min 2, maximum 3)

What about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoicing, domain and technical support administration section? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web site hosting vendor. Occasionally, depending on the billing transaction tool (principally meant for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting distributor is availing of, the avid customers can wind up with two additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name administration software; 2: the ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).

Problem Number 5: 120+ website hosting CP menus to learn... promptly

cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them rapidly... That's very arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting vendors:

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