How does cpanel-based hosting function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on today's web site hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite unsubstantial marketing segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-size marketing niche, which supplies an immense quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying absolutely the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the webspace hosting offerings on the entire hosting market supply strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other site hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than 200k web page hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mark that one...
200,000 "website hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The hosting "diversity" and the webspace hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are simply an ordinary guy who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and web sites . Are you ready to make your web hosting choice? Is there any hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand web space hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ unique hosting brands worldwide will offer you precisely the same cPanel web site hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the present webspace hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The web site hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a big stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably answered most webspace hosting industry prerequisites. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Point Number 1: An imbecilic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extremely attentive not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to remove on the web server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous 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 attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Check for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain folder configuration 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)
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 confused? We absolutely are!
Disadvantage Number 2: The very same e-mail folder setup
The mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chaps firmly reinforce their faith in God when coping with the electronic mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to muck things up too irretrievably.
Downside Number Three: A total lack of domain manipulation GUIs
Do we need to point out the complete absence of a contemporary domain name manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois info, secure the Whois details, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" interface at all. That's a vast drawback. An inexcusable one, we wish to add...
Downside Number 4: Numerous user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the necessity for another login to use the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support administration menu? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web page hosting distributor. At times, on the basis of the invoicing tool (especially conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is availing of, the enthusiastic clients can end up with two extra login places (1: the billing transaction/domain management software solution; 2: the ticket support user interface), winding up with an aggregate of three login locations (including cPanel).
Predicament No.5: 120+ web page hosting CP departments to memorize... swiftly
cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the webspace hosting Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them swiftly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting service providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...