How does cpanel web hosting function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel webspace hosting offerings on the present-day website hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which supplies an enormous number of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying the very same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole web space hosting marketplace offer one and the very same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based webspace hosting prices are alike. Very similar. Giving those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web site hosting platform/website hosting CP alternative. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200k hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The web site hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different webspace hosting brand names. Suppose you are just a regular fellow who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and sites . Are you prepared to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web page hosting variant you can settle on? Of course there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand web space hosting vendors in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different hosting brands across the world will give you exactly the same cPanel CP and platform, named in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the current website hosting market is... Period.
The website hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple math demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based site hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably met most web site hosting industry preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming Number 1: A laughable domain name folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra careful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the web server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed 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. See for yourself how amazing cPanel's domain name folder setup 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)
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 nonplussed? We categorically are!
Negative Aspect No.2: The same mail folder structure
The e-mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly fortify their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the email server, hoping not to botch things up too seriously.
Negative Point No.3: A total deficiency of domain name administration sections
Do we need to cite the entire lack of a modern domain name administration tool - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domains' Whois information, protect the Whois information, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" menu at all. That's a great problem. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Negative Aspect Number Four: Multiple login locations (min two, max 3)
How about the need for an extra login to utilize the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management interface? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web hosting company. Now and then, based on the billing platform (principally made for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting service provider is using, the enthusiastic users can wind up with two extra login places (1: the billing/domain name administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Shortcoming Number Five: More than 120 website hosting Control Panel departments to grasp... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the web page hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to get to know each one of them. And you'd better memorize them fast... That's quite insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...