What Precisely is cPanel Hosting?

For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel web hosting offerings on the present web hosting market are furnished by a very insubstantial business niche (as far as annual money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which provides a vast amount of different web hosting brand names, yet offering strictly the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offers on the whole website hosting market offer one and the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Giving those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/CP alternative. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, remark that one...

200k "web hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded

The web hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an ordinary person who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the website making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and web sites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can decide upon? Sure there is, now there are more than 200,000 website hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different hosting brands worldwide will give you precisely the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the variety on today's web hosting market is... Period.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel web hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps met most web hosting business prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Shortcoming No.1: An imbecilic domain folder setup

If you have two or more domains, though, be extra attentive not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub 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 delete on the web server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located 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. Check for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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)
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 name)

Are you getting disorientated? We undeniably are!

Negative Sign No.2: The same electronic mail folder setup

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly fortify their faith in God when coping with the mail folders on the mail server, praying not to botch things up too seriously.

Problem Number 3: A total absence of domain manipulation options

Do we have to refer to the sheer lack of a contemporary domain name manipulation tool - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois details, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" tool at all. That's a big shortcoming. An unforgivable one, we want to point out...

Negative Aspect Number 4: Many user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)

What about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support administration system? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web hosting company. Sometimes, based on the invoicing tool (principally invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting firm is using, the keen users can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing/domain name administration user interface; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), winding up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).

Weak Side Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP departments to grasp... rapidly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the web hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.

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

As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...