What is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based website hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-size business segment, which generates a vast number of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying one and the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire website hosting market offer one and the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based website hosting price tags are alike. Quite similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/Control Panel option. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...

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

The website hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply a normal chap who's not very well acquainted with (as the majority of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domains and online portals. Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web hosting option you can decide upon? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than 200,000 hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brands around the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the diversity on the present web hosting market is... Full stop.

The website hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based website hosting solution

Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably satisfied most web hosting business requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weak Side Number One: A moronic domain name folder configuration

If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra cautious not to erase 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). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known 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 attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how great cPanel's domain 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)
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 name)
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 getting perplexed? We positively are!

Downside Number 2: The very same email folder system

The mail folder arrangement on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin chums firmly increase their faith in God when handling the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to botch things up too seriously.

Weak Side Number 3: A sheer deficiency of domain name administration sections

Do we need to point out the sheer deficiency of a modern domain name administration tool - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois info, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a mammoth downside. An unpardonable one, we would like to add...

Weak Point Number 4: Many user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)

What about the need for an additional login to make use of the billing, domain and tech support management tool? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel website hosting firm. Sometimes, based on the invoice transaction system (particularly intended for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel website hosting corporation is using, the earnest customers can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name administration interface; 2: the ticket support software), winding up with a total of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).

Drawback Number Five: 120+ website hosting CP departments to get acquainted with... swiftly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to get to know each and every one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them rapidly... That's quite arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting suppliers:

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