What is cPanel Website Hosting?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the present-day web hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which provides a great amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing the very same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace offer one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are alike. Quite similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/web hosting CP option. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, mark that one...

200,000 "hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded

The hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are simply a normal chap who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and online portals. Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any website hosting alternative you can opt for? Sure there is, now there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting vendors in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brands around the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on today's web hosting market is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTO we are all participating in

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a colossal stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly met most website hosting market demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Problem Number One: A stupid domain name folder structure

If you have two or more domains, though, be extremely careful not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Observe for yourself how good 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)
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)
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 disorientated? We undeniably are!

Weak Point Number Two: The same electronic mail folder structure

The mail folder structure on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chums firmly fortify their faith in God when managing the email folders on the email server, praying not to mess things up too fatally.

Weak Point Number 3: A thorough absence of domain name administration user interfaces

Do we need to point out the total lack of a contemporary domain name management interface - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois details, modify/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" tool at all. That's a colossal downside. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...

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

What about the demand for an additional login to access the billing, domain name and technical support management software? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based hosting service provider. Occasionally, depending on the billing transaction system (particularly made for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting supplier is utilizing, the enthusiastic users can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name management software; 2: the ticket support tool), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).

Downside Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel sections to grasp... rapidly

cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to learn each of them. And you'd better pick them up rapidly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting vendors:

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