How does cpanel-based site hosting function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel hosting offers on the present hosting market are supplied by a quite insignificant business niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller webspace hosting is a sort of a small-sized business niche, which supplies a big number of different web hosting brands, yet offering precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the webspace hosting offerings on the whole web space hosting market offer absolutely the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web page hosting price tags are alike. Quite similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web site hosting platform/web space hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200,000 site hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, remark that one...
200,000 "hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The webspace hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely an average fellow who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the web space hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and websites . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any website hosting option you can select? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 site hosting firms out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ unique site hosting brand names around the world will give you literally the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on today's web hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel webspace hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps satisfied most web hosting business requirements. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming No.1: A foolish domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be very watchful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to 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 easy to delete on the server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 confused? We clearly are!
Weak Point No.2: The same email folder setup
The electronic mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin guys strongly strengthen their faith in God when handling the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to screw things up too gravely.
Shortcoming Number 3: A complete lack of domain management GUIs
Do we have to cite the sheer lack of a modern domain name management interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois information, shield the Whois information, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" tool at all. That's a mammoth shortcoming. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...
Disadvantage No.4: Numerous user login locations (min two, maximum three)
What about the demand for an additional login to make use of the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management tool? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web hosting company. Now and then, on the basis of the invoicing system (principally built for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting service provider is making use of, the zealous clients can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing/domain name administration system; 2: the ticket support system), ending up with an aggregate of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Shortcoming Number Five: 120+ web page hosting CP menus to pick up... quickly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to become acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them swiftly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...