What is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's website hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small-size business niche, which generates a huge amount of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole hosting marketplace offer one and the very same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...

Two hundred thousand "hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded

The hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are just a regular guy who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web site creation procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and sites. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can select? Sure there is, today there are more than 200k web hosting service providers out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different web hosting brand names around the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, dubbed in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on today's hosting marketplace is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be cruel with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly covered most web hosting business prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Problem No.1: A dumb domain name folder structure

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be ultra watchful not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to 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 web server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain 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. Examine for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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)
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 growing bewildered? We definitely are!

Weakness Number Two: The very same email folder structure

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is literally the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly fortify their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to muck things up too gravely.

Weak Point Number 3: An absolute absence of domain administration GUIs

Do we need to point out the entire deficiency of a contemporary domain administration interface - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois info, secure the Whois information, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" section at all. That's an enormous shortcoming. An unjustifiable one, we want to point out...

Shortcoming No.4: Numerous user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)

How about the need for an extra login to utilize the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support administration user interface? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel hosting supplier. At times, depending on the invoicing platform (especially meant for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting company is utilizing, the devoted clients can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration interface; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), ending up with an aggregate of three user login locations (including cPanel).

Drawback No.5: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel departments to learn... rapidly

cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the website hosting CP. It's a fine idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them quickly... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting providers:

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