What is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the contemporary hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing segment, which provides a big number of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering absolutely the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace offer one and the very same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are alike. Very much alike. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/website hosting CP alternative. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...

200k "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet differently named

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are only a normal guy who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and online portals. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting variant you can choose? Of course there is, today there are more than 200k web hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brand names in the world will offer you the very same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on today's hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is an immense stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably answered most website hosting market requirements. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Downside Number 1: A ludicrous domain name folder setup

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra watchful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the web server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 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 surely are!

Problem Number 2: The same electronic mail folder structure

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the server is literally the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin chums strongly reinforce their belief in God when coping with the mail folders on the email server, praying not to screw things up too seriously.

Weakness Number 3: A thorough deficiency of domain name administration interfaces

Do we need to bring up the entire deficiency of a contemporary domain administration user interface - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domains, change domains' Whois information, secure the Whois information, alter/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a major weakness. An unforgettable one, we want to add...

Weak Side Number Four: Multiple user login places (minimum 2, max 3)

What about the demand for another login to use the invoicing, domain name and tech support management system? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based hosting service provider. Occasionally, based on the invoicing system (especially designed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting distributor is using, the keen customers can end up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support section), ending up with a total of three user login places (including cPanel).

Inconvenience No.5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel areas to get acquainted with... rapidly

cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a fine idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better learn them fast... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting corporations:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...