What Indeed is cPanel Hosting?
For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel Hosting offers on the current website hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite insignificant business segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a type of a small-size marketing segment, which provides a vast quantity of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire website hosting market provide the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/website hosting CP choice. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200k "Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Assume you are just a normal person who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and web sites. Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200k hosting suppliers in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique hosting brand names across the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the variety on the current website hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The pros and cons of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps covered all website hosting business prerequisites. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Side Number One: A laughable domain folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra careful not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the web server, because they all are located 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. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Determine for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder configuration 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)
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 confused? We positively are!
Disadvantage Number 2: The very same e-mail folder structure
The mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly strengthen their belief in God when dealing with the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to muck things up too irreparably.
Inconvenience Number 3: A sheer absence of domain manipulation options
Do we need to refer to the entire lack of a modern domain name manipulation user interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, change domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not contain such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a vast inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...
Weakness Number Four: Many user login locations (minimum 2, max three)
How about the demand for another login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and tech support administration software solution? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel Hosting company. Occasionally, depending on the invoicing transaction tool (particularly intended for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting company is using, the eager clients can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain name management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Disadvantage Number Five: More than 120 CP departments to pick up... promptly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a great idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better get familiar with them promptly... That's very impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting firms:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...