How cPanel Website Hosting Works

For your info, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the present web hosting market are provided by a quite insignificant business niche (when it comes to annual money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized business segment, which generates a huge number of different web hosting brands, yet providing literally the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole hosting market offer exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Giving those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...

200k "hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed

The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are only a regular person who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and sites. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any hosting option you can settle on? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique website hosting brand names around the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the current website hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple arithmetic reveals that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably covered all hosting industry preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Disadvantage Number One: A stupid domain folder setup

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extremely cautious not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 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)
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 becoming baffled? We positively are!

Inconvenience Number 2: The very same mail folder system

The email folder structure on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly enhance their faith in God when managing the electronic mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to botch things up too badly.

Negative Point Number 3: An entire lack of domain management interfaces

Do we have to refer to the total absence of a contemporary domain name manipulation interface - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois details, secure the Whois information, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" section at all. That's a vast weakness. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...

Drawback Number Four: Many user login locations (min two, max three)

What about the need for another login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support administration menu? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting supplier. Occasionally, based on the billing transaction platform (principally invented for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting company is making use of, the earnest customers can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration software platform; 2: the ticket support software solution), ending up with an aggregate of three login places (counting cPanel).

Negative Side Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty Control Panel departments to become familiar with... fast

cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a terrific idea to learn each and every one of them. And you'd better get to know them fast... That's very impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting corporations:

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