What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?

For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the contemporary hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable marketing niche (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small business segment, which furnishes an immense amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering strictly the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the hosting offers on the whole hosting marketplace supply one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are simply a normal bloke who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domains and web sites. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any hosting option you can pick? Sure there is, now there are more than 200k web hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different website hosting brands worldwide will give you absolutely the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, named in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the variety on the present-day website hosting market is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in

Simple mathematics shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is an enormous stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in 50...

The positive and negative sides of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied all web hosting industry demands. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Negative Point Number One: A laughable domain name folder structure

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra careful not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to delete on the hosting server, since they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located 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. Verify for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain 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)
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)

Are you growing confused? We doubtlessly are!

Weakness Number Two: The same e-mail folder configuration

The email folder arrangement on the web server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes firmly increase their belief in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to mess things up too fatally.

Downside Number Three: A total lack of domain name administration interfaces

Do we have to refer to the thorough absence of a modern domain manipulation tool - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois details, shield the Whois details, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a great problem. An unjustifiable one, we want to add...

Downside Number Four: Many login locations (minimum 2, maximum three)

What about the necessity for an additional login to access the billing transaction, domain name and technical support management software? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting company. At times, depending on the billing tool (particularly made for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting vendor is making use of, the avid users can end up with two extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Negative Side Number Five: 120+ web hosting CP menus to memorize... fast

cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a fabulous idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better get to know them fast... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting companies:

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