What is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the present-day web hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable business segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size business niche, which generates a vast number of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering the very same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace offer precisely the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed
The hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to just one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are just an average fellow who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domain names and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any web hosting variant you can decide upon? Sure there is, as of now there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brand names in the world will give you precisely the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on the contemporary web hosting market is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps met all web hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Downside No.1: A dumb domain folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extra watchful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Determine for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain name 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 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)
Are you getting confused? We undeniably are!
Negative Point No.2: The same electronic mail folder structure
The electronic mail folder structure on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly strengthen their faith in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to mess things up too badly.
Predicament Number 3: An entire shortage of domain name manipulation GUIs
Do we have to mention the thorough shortage of a contemporary domain name manipulation menu - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, alter domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois info, alter/create name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" section at all. That's a mammoth disadvantage. An unjustifiable one, we want to point out...
Problem Number 4: Many user login locations (min two, max three)
How about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain name and tech support management software solution? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting corporation. Now and then, on the basis of the invoice transaction platform (especially developed for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting supplier is utilizing, the avid customers can wind up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain administration menu; 2: the ticket support system), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Negative Sign Number Five: 120+ web hosting Control Panel areas to memorize... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them promptly... That's extremely impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...