How does cpanel web site hosting function?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel webspace hosting offers on the current web site hosting market are supplied by a quite insubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small marketing niche, which furnishes a big amount of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing strictly the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web site hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish literally the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/CP alternative. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200k web page hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...

200,000 "web site hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely named

The website hosting "variety" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Imagine you are only a normal bloke who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website development procedures and the webspace hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and web sites . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can pick? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand site hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different webspace hosting brand names all over the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the assortment on the current website hosting marketplace is... Period.

The website hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in

Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting corporation is a huge strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably answered most site hosting market preconditions. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Problem No.1: A foolish domain name folder configuration

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra watchful not to remove entirely 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 domain names are very simple to erase on the web server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular 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 delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Check for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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)
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 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 growing baffled? We certainly are!

Weak Side Number 2: The very same mail folder setup

The email folder structure on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly fortify their faith in God when coping with the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to bungle things up too badly.

Negative Side Number 3: An utter lack of domain management interfaces

Do we need to point out the absolute absence of a modern domain administration user interface - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, modify domains' Whois information, secure the Whois info, change/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a gigantic shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...

Inconvenience No.4: Multiple user login places (min 2, max 3)

What about the need for an extra login to make use of the invoicing, domain and technical support management tool? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based site hosting distributor. Sometimes, on the basis of the billing platform (particularly designed for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting service provider is availing of, the zealous users can wind up with two extra login locations (1: the invoicing/domain administration GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support system), winding up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).

Predicament Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web space hosting Control Panel areas to grasp... quickly

cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the web page hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them quickly... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.

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

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