How does cpanel-based website hosting work?
For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based web space hosting offerings on today's website hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web site hosting is a kind of a small marketing niche, which furnishes a vast number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying one and the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the entire hosting marketplace furnish the very same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel website hosting price tags are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web space hosting platform/CP alternative. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200k web space hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...
200k "website hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
The web page hosting "diversity" and the web space hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web page hosting brand names. Suppose you are just an average fellow who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the web site hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and online portals . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any web space hosting option you can choose? Of course there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand web page hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique hosting brand names around the world will offer you the same cPanel web space hosting Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on today's hosting market is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple math demonstrates that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web page hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably fulfilled most web site hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Aspect Number 1: A dumb domain folder setup
If you have two or more domain names, though, be extra attentive not to delete completely 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 domain names are very easy to remove on the hosting server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name 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 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)
Are you growing confused? We surely are!
Inconvenience Number Two: The same e-mail folder configuration
The electronic mail folder structure on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly increase their faith in God when tackling the email folders on the email server, praying not to fuck things up too fatally.
Weakness Number Three: A sheer absence of domain name management tools
Do we need to bring up the entire deficiency of a contemporary domain name management interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domains' Whois information, protect the Whois information, change/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" section at all. That's a huge shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we wish to add...
Weak Point No.4: Multiple user login locations (min 2, max 3)
What about the demand for an extra login to use the billing, domain and tech support administration user interface? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based webspace hosting company. Occasionally, on the basis of the invoicing transaction platform (especially developed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting corporation is using, the zealous users can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoicing/domain management system; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: 120+ hosting CP departments to get acquainted with... briskly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the site hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them quickly... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting corporations:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...