How does cpanel-based site hosting operate?
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel webspace hosting offerings on the present-day website hosting market are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small business segment, which furnishes a big amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering exactly the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the entire site hosting market provide precisely the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting prices are similar. Very much alike. Giving those who need a top web hosting service almost no other web space hosting platform/web page hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200,000 webspace hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...
200k "site hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
The web page hosting "diversity" and the webspace hosting "offers" Google reveals to us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web space hosting brand names. Imagine you are simply an ordinary guy who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website development processes and the web site hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any webspace hosting alternative you can choose? Sure there is, today there are more than 200k webspace hosting providers out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different web site hosting brand names in the world will give you strictly the same cPanel web site hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on today's webspace hosting market is... Full stop.
The website hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel web space hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably met most website hosting business prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Problem Number 1: A moronic domain name folder arrangement
If you have two or more domains, though, be extra careful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web server, because they all are located 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 try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how amazing cPanel's domain name folder structure 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)
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 growing confused? We undoubtedly are!
Shortcoming No.2: The very same mail folder setup
The electronic mail folder arrangement on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly strengthen their belief in God when dealing with the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to muck things up too badly.
Problem Number Three: An utter lack of domain name administration sections
Do we need to bring up the thorough shortage of a contemporary domain administration menu - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois information, edit/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a major inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we wish to add...
Negative Sign Number Four: Multiple user login locations (min two, max 3)
How about the necessity for another login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support administration system? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web site hosting firm. Occasionally, depending on the invoice transaction tool (particularly designed for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is availing of, the eager users can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing/domain management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support software platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Negative Point Number Five: 120+ webspace hosting CP areas to get familiar with... quickly
cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ areas inside the webspace hosting CP. It's a superb idea to become acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them swiftly... That's very insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting corporations:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...