What Indeed is cPanel Website Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the current web hosting market are furnished by a quite insubstantial business niche (when it comes to annual capital flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small business segment, which supplies a huge quantity of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market provide the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are alike. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/hosting CP alternative. So, there is only one fact: out of more than 200k web hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, mark that one...

200,000 "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named

The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are simply a regular chap who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site development processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web pages. Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web hosting variant you can opt for? Sure there is, now there are more than 200k website hosting firms in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different website hosting brands worldwide will offer you absolutely the same cPanel CP and platform, named in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the present-day website hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in

Simple math shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a great strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably answered most web hosting business requirements. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Downside Number 1: An imbecilic domain name folder setup

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra attentive not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how great 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)
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 name)
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 baffled? We doubtlessly are!

Negative Aspect Number Two: The very same mail folder arrangement

The mail folder structure on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes strongly strengthen their belief in God when managing the e-mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to mess things up too seriously.

Negative Sign Number Three: A complete deficiency of domain management options

Do we need to cite the thorough shortage of a contemporary domain management GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not provide such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a considerable inconvenience. An unjustifiable one, we wish to point out...

Negative Aspect Number Four: Numerous login places (minimum 2, maximum 3)

What about the demand for another login to utilize the billing, domain and technical support management user interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel hosting corporation. Sometimes, based on the invoicing transaction tool (principally intended for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting provider is using, the avid clients can wind up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain administration system; 2: the ticket support system), winding up with a total of 3 login places (including cPanel).

Predicament Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty website hosting CP menus to grasp... fast

cPanel presents to your attention 120+ areas inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting service providers:

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