How does cpanel-based hosting function?

For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel site hosting offers on today's web space hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable business segment (when it comes to annual money flow) named reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing segment, which furnishes an enormous amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing one and the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace supply the very same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting price tags are alike. Very much alike. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other hosting platform/web site hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200,000 hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, note that one...

200,000 "hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded

The website hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web site hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely an average bloke who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the website development procedures and the webspace hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and online portals . Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting option you can pick? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200k hosting firms in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brand names in the world will give you the very same cPanel web space hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the current webspace hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in

Simple math shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than one in 50...

The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based site hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and possibly fulfilled all web site hosting market demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weakness Number 1: A foolish domain name folder structure

If you have two or more domains, however, be ultra careful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the hosting server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain 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 name)
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 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 unquestionably are!

Downside Number 2: The very same e-mail folder arrangement

The e-mail folder structure on the server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly strengthen their faith in God when managing the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too gravely.

Negative Point Number 3: A complete lack of domain name manipulation GUIs

Do we need to mention the total shortage of a modern domain administration tool - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domains' Whois details, secure the Whois information, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" tool at all. That's a colossal shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we want to add...

Weak Side Number 4: Many user login locations (min 2, max 3)

How about the demand for an extra login to utilize the billing, domain and technical support administration interface? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based website hosting vendor. Now and then, based on the invoice transaction tool (principally intended for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting supplier is availing of, the zealous clients can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the billing/domain management software; 2: the ticket support platform), winding up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Drawback Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web space hosting Control Panel sections to get to know... fast

cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the site hosting CP. It's a fine idea to become acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them promptly... That's extremely insolent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting vendors:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...