What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the present-day hosting market are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which furnishes a huge quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet offering strictly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the whole website hosting market supply strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed

The hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Imagine you are simply a normal guy who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domains and web sites. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any hosting variant you can select? Of course there is, at present there are more than 200,000 website hosting firms out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different web hosting brands across the world will give you the very same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the assortment on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple math demonstrates that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied most web hosting market requirements. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weak Point Number One: A dumb domain name folder system

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extremely watchful not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to delete on the web hosting server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Discover for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder configuration 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)
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)

Are you becoming puzzled? We certainly are!

Downside Number Two: The very same mail folder arrangement

The electronic mail folder structure on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly reinforce their belief in God when managing the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to muck things up too fatally.

Negative Point No.3: An entire shortage of domain name manipulation tools

Do we need to bring up the sheer absence of a modern domain name manipulation user interface - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" tool at all. That's a vast weakness. An unjustifiable one, we would like to point out...

Downside Number Four: Numerous login places (minimum 2, max three)

What about the necessity for another login to make use of the billing transaction, domain name and technical support administration software platform? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel hosting vendor. Now and then, on the basis of the invoicing transaction platform (principally devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel hosting provider is availing of, the zealous clients can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing/domain administration system; 2: the ticket support interface), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Inconvenience No.5: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel areas to get familiar with... quickly

cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a terrific idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them quickly... That's excessively insolent on cPanel's side.

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

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