What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?

For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's web hosting market are provided by a very insignificant business niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which furnishes a big number of different web hosting brands, yet supplying literally the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire web hosting market furnish strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mark that one...

200,000 "hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled

The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are only a regular person who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site creation procedures and the hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and web portals. Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can select? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than 200k web hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brands all over the world will offer you literally the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the assortment on the present-day website hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple mathematics reveals that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is an enormous stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...

The upsides and downsides of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably met all web hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weakness Number One: A dumb domain name folder system

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extra careful not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous 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 erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Check for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder system 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 bewildered? We undeniably are!

Negative Aspect Number 2: The very same electronic mail folder structure

The mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly strengthen their faith in God when handling the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to botch things up too seriously.

Negative Aspect Number Three: An utter shortage of domain name management interfaces

Do we need to cite the thorough absence of a modern domain manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois info, shield the Whois information, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a big downside. An unjustifiable one, we wish to add...

Negative Sign Number Four: Many user login places (minimum 2, max three)

How about the need for an additional login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support management system? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel hosting supplier. Sometimes, on the basis of the invoice transaction platform (especially built for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting distributor is utilizing, the devoted customers can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain name administration software platform; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of 3 login places (including cPanel).

Weak Point Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty CP areas to memorize... rapidly

cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 departments inside the hosting CP. It's a remarkable idea to learn each one of them. And you'd better get to know them swiftly... That's quite arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting vendors:

As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...