How does cpanel-based web hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web site hosting offers on the present site hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to annual capital flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small-size business segment, which supplies a big number of different web hosting brand names, yet providing one and the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offers on the whole web hosting market supply one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel webspace hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k site hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "site hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The site hosting "diversity" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to just one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web page hosting brand names. Assume you are merely an ordinary guy who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the web site hosting platforms, which actually power the various domain names and websites . Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any site hosting alternative you can choose? Of course there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand web space hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique web space hosting brand names across the world will give you literally the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the variety on today's web site hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps fulfilled all webspace hosting business demands. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Drawback Number 1: A dumb domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domains, though, be extra attentive not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, 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 server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known 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 delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain 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)
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 name)
Are you growing nonplussed? We surely are!
Negative Sign Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The mail folder arrangement on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin guys strongly fortify their belief in God when coping with the email folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too badly.
Drawback No.3: An entire deficiency of domain name administration tools
Do we have to refer to the total shortage of a contemporary domain name administration interface - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois information, shield the Whois info, alter/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not provide such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's an enormous inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...
Weak Point Number Four: Numerous login locations (minimum two, max three)
What about the necessity for another login to avail of the invoicing, domain and tech support administration software solution? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web site hosting provider. Now and then, on the basis of the invoicing transaction tool (principally invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting corporation is using, the zealous customers can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support section), winding up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: More than a hundred and twenty site hosting Control Panel areas to get acquainted with... rapidly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the web space hosting Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to learn each one of them. And you'd better learn them fast... That's way too impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web site hosting firms:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...