How does cpanel-based web hosting function?

For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel website hosting offers on today's hosting marketplace are supplied by a very insignificant marketing segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) named reseller hosting. Reseller web page hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which generates a huge quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering one and the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide the very same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based web page hosting prices are alike. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web page hosting platform/webspace hosting CP alternative. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand site hosting brands all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "web site hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly dubbed

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web space hosting trademarked names. Assume you are only a regular chap who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the site development processes and the webspace hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and sites . Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web hosting variant you can select? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200,000 web page hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique website hosting brands all over the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel CP and platform, labeled differently, with the very same price tags! WOW! That's how large the assortment on the present-day web page hosting market is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in

Simple arithmetic shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...

The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based web site hosting solution

Let's not be cruel with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably fulfilled all hosting market preconditions. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weakness No.1: A stupid domain name folder setup

If you have two or more domain names, though, be extremely attentive not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the web server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed 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. Verify for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name folder arrangement is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)
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 getting disorientated? We surely are!

Predicament No.2: The very same email folder structure

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly reinforce their faith in God when managing the e-mail folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too harshly.

Weakness Number 3: A sheer absence of domain management GUIs

Do we have to bring up the utter absence of a modern domain name management tool - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domains' Whois info, secure the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "modern" interface at all. That's a major drawback. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...

Drawback No.4: Numerous login places (min two, max 3)

How about the necessity for an additional login to avail of the billing, domain name and tech support administration software platform? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based website hosting supplier. At times, based on the billing tool (principally meant for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting provider is availing of, the enthusiastic customers can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain administration software; 2: the trouble ticket support system), ending up with an aggregate of three login places (including cPanel).

Weak Side Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web site hosting CP departments to learn... quickly

cPanel offers for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the web space hosting Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's very impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting service providers:

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