How Does cPanel Website Hosting Work?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the current web hosting market are supplied by a quite insubstantial marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which supplies a big quantity of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing one and the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/hosting CP choice. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed
Unlimited bandwidth
1 website hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The web hosting "variety" and the hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are just a normal person who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the website creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting variant you can decide upon? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200k website hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands across the world will offer you the very same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the diversity on the contemporary website hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic demonstrates that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a huge strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably fulfilled most web hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Problem Number One: A ludicrous domain folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely attentive not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to delete on the hosting server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)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 name)
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 name)
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 becoming nonplussed? We positively are!
Weakness Number Two: The same email folder system
The mail folder structure on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly strengthen their faith in God when handling the e-mail folders on the mail server, praying not to screw things up too badly.
Negative Side Number Three: An utter shortage of domain administration sections
Do we have to mention the thorough deficiency of a modern domain name manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois information, change/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a big inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we wish to point out...
Predicament Number 4: Many login locations (min two, max three)
How about the need for another login to use the billing, domain name and technical support administration software platform? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web hosting firm. Occasionally, on the basis of the billing system (principally devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting vendor is availing of, the eager clients can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain management software; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Problem Number 5: More than 120 web hosting CP areas to get acquainted with... swiftly
cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better pick them up briskly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting distributors:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...