How does cpanel hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel website hosting offerings on the present webspace hosting marketplace are supplied by a very insignificant business segment (as far as annual money flow is concerned) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web space hosting is a sort of a small-sized marketing niche, which supplies a vast number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying literally the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web page hosting market supply precisely the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other webspace hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200k "web space hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely named
The webspace hosting "variety" and the webspace hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different webspace hosting brand names. Assume you are simply a normal chap who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the website making procedures and the web space hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and online portals . Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web space hosting option you can opt for? Sure there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 web space hosting distributors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique website hosting brands across the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present-day web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.
The hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a colossal strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel web site hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and perhaps fulfilled all web space hosting market requirements. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside Number One: A ludicrous domain name folder system
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extremely cautious not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Examine for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain name 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 name)
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 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 name)
Are you getting disorientated? We surely are!
Disadvantage Number Two: The same mail folder system
The mail folder configuration on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly enhance their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to screw things up too irretrievably.
Negative Side Number Three: An entire absence of domain manipulation user interfaces
Do we have to cite the absolute lack of a modern domain manipulation user interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domain names, change domains' Whois details, protect the Whois info, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not contain such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a major predicament. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...
Shortcoming No.4: Multiple user login places (min 2, maximum three)
What about the demand for an extra login to use the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support management software platform? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web site hosting provider. Occasionally, on the basis of the billing transaction system (particularly invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting provider is utilizing, the keen customers can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing/domain management GUI; 2: the ticket support GUI), winding up with a total of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: More than one hundred and twenty Control Panel sections to learn... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better grasp them swiftly... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting corporations:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...