What Does cPanel Hosting Stand for?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the current web hosting marketplace are supplied by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (when it comes to annual cash flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small marketing segment, which furnishes a huge amount of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing one and the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offers on the entire website hosting marketplace provide strictly the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are alike. Quite similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled
The hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are merely an average person who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the site development processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and websites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can opt for? Of course there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting corporations out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ unique web hosting brands across the world will give you exactly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the assortment on the present web hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple math demonstrates that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The upsides and downsides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably met all web hosting market demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Sign Number 1: A ludicrous domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to remove on the hosting server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, 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 attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name folder arrangement 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 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 becoming puzzled? We undeniably are!
Inconvenience No.2: The same mail folder arrangement
The e-mail folder arrangement on the server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly strengthen their belief in God when coping with the mail folders on the email server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.
Drawback Number 3: A total lack of domain administration sections
Do we need to bring up the utter lack of a modern domain name administration interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois info, protect the Whois info, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a great problem. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...
Negative Point Number 4: Multiple user login places (minimum two, maximum 3)
How about the demand for an additional login to make use of the invoice transaction, domain and technical support management user interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting company. Occasionally, depending on the invoicing system (particularly created for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting company is availing of, the avid users can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain name administration software; 2: the ticket support system), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience No.5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel departments to grasp... promptly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a fabulous idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them swiftly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting companies:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...