How does cpanel-based web hosting function?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the contemporary web site hosting marketplace are provided by a quite unsubstantial business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web space hosting is a kind of a small-size business niche, which furnishes a great number of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing the very same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the whole site hosting market provide strictly the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. So, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200k "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The web page hosting "diversity" and the web page hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web site hosting brand names. Imagine you are just an average chap who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the web site making procedures and the web site hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domains and web portals . Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any hosting variant you can choose? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200k hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique site hosting brands across the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel web site hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the contemporary site hosting market is... Period.
The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...
The upsides and downsides of the cPanel web space hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably answered all site hosting business prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Side Number 1: A dumb domain name folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be ultra cautious not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple to remove on the server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder configuration is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)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)
Are you growing perplexed? We certainly are!
Downside Number 2: The same e-mail folder configuration
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is literally the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chums firmly increase their belief in God when handling the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to fuck things up too gravely.
Negative Point Number 3: An entire absence of domain name management sections
Do we need to point out the absolute absence of a modern domain manipulation platform - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domains' Whois info, protect the Whois info, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a great problem. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Predicament Number Four: Many login locations (min two, max three)
What about the need for an additional login to access the billing, domain name and technical support management platform? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web site hosting corporation. At times, based on the billing platform (principally designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting provider is availing of, the zealous users can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing/domain management software; 2: the ticket support menu), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Weakness No.5: More than 120 webspace hosting CP areas to learn... rapidly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the web site hosting Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them fast... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...