cPanel Website Hosting Unmasked

For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based website hosting offers on the current website hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite inconsiderable business niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which supplies a vast quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet providing absolutely the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole website hosting marketplace furnish exactly the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based website hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/CP choice. Thus, there is just one fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "website hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled

The website hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a regular chap who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and websites. Are you ready to make your web hosting selection? Is there any hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 web hosting providers out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ different web hosting brand names in the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, named differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the present-day web hosting market is... Full stop.

The website hosting LOTTO we are all participating in

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a big strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel website hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly covered all web hosting industry prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Disadvantage No.1: An idiotic domain folder structure

If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extra careful not to remove 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). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very 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 erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain folder system 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)
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 getting nonplussed? We categorically are!

Downside Number 2: The same electronic mail folder setup

The email folder configuration on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly reinforce their belief in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to screw things up too seriously.

Weak Point Number 3: An entire shortage of domain name administration options

Do we have to point out the utter deficiency of a contemporary domain manipulation interface - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, change domains' Whois details, secure the Whois details, modify/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" section at all. That's an immense disadvantage. An unjustifiable one, we would like to add...

Weakness Number 4: Many user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)

How about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain and technical support administration user interface? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel website hosting firm. Occasionally, on the basis of the billing platform (particularly devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel website hosting company is using, the zealous clients can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration tool; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), winding up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).

Disadvantage No.5: 120+ web hosting Control Panel sections to become acquainted with... promptly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to become acquainted with each of them. And you'd better grasp them rapidly... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting firms:

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