How does cpanel web site hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel website hosting offers on the current hosting marketplace are generated by a quite insignificant business niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a type of a small-size business segment, which supplies a vast number of different web hosting brands, yet providing exactly the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish literally the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based website hosting price tags are alike. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other site hosting platform/site hosting CP choice. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k site hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
200k "site hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The site hosting "variety" and the site hosting "offerings" Google presents to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web page hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are merely an ordinary fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the site making procedures and the web space hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and sites . Are you prepared to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, today there are more than 200,000 website hosting service providers out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web space hosting brand names around the world will give you the very same cPanel site hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the variety on today's site hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math shows that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel site hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and presumably covered most site hosting industry prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Side Number 1: A ludicrous domain name folder setup
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extremely watchful not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the hosting 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 is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name folder system 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 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 getting baffled? We unquestionably are!
Problem Number Two: The same email folder system
The mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly strengthen their faith in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too harshly.
Weak Side Number Three: An absolute shortage of domain manipulation sections
Do we have to refer to the sheer deficiency of a modern domain name administration tool - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois info, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's an immense weakness. An unjustifiable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Aspect No.4: Many login places (min two, maximum 3)
How about the demand for another login to use the invoicing, domain name and tech support administration interface? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based website hosting company. Sometimes, based on the invoicing tool (particularly meant for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is using, the eager clients can end up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).
Weakness No.5: More than one hundred and twenty web space hosting CP departments to learn... briskly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ areas inside the website hosting CP. It's a fine idea to memorize each of them. And you'd better learn them swiftly... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting suppliers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...