What Exactly is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the current website hosting marketplace are provided by a quite insignificant business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized marketing segment, which provides a big number of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering absolutely the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offers on the whole website hosting marketplace provide literally the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web hosting prices are alike. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. So, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, note that one...

Two hundred thousand "web hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled

The web hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply an ordinary person who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web site making processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and websites. Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any hosting option you can pick? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200k website hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand different hosting brand names around the world will offer you the very same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, named differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the variety on the current website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in

Simple math shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably fulfilled all web hosting business prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Downside Number One: A laughable domain folder configuration

If you have two or more domains, though, be very cautious not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to delete on the hosting server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located 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. Discover for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain 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 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 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)

Are you getting confused? We positively are!

Predicament Number Two: The same electronic mail folder structure

The mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly increase their belief in God when dealing with the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to muck things up too irretrievably.

Negative Aspect Number Three: A total lack of domain name administration tools

Do we have to bring up the entire absence of a contemporary domain manipulation interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, change domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, change/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" section at all. That's a vast downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...

Disadvantage Number Four: Many user login places (min two, maximum three)

What about the demand for another login to avail of the invoicing, domain and tech support management menu? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting firm. Occasionally, on the basis of the invoicing tool (particularly developed for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting supplier is utilizing, the avid customers can end up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain administration user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).

Disadvantage Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel sections to pick up... swiftly

cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 areas inside the web hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's way too impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting providers:

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