How does cpanel website hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based web space hosting offers on the current site hosting market are furnished by a quite inconsiderable business segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-sized business segment, which furnishes a vast quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing strictly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web site hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace provide one and the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel webspace hosting price tags are similar. Very much alike. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web site hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, remark that one...
200,000 "web page hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The site hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us boil down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just an ordinary chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and web pages . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any webspace hosting variant you can choose? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200k site hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique web site hosting brand names all over the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present site hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math reveals that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based web page hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably covered most web hosting business prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Shortcoming No.1: A dumb domain folder system
If you have two or more domain names, though, be very careful not to remove entirely 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the web server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known 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 domain names, please. Discover for yourself how good 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 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 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 name)
Are you becoming confused? We undoubtedly are!
Negative Sign Number 2: The very same mail folder arrangement
The mail folder structure on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly reinforce their belief in God when handling the e-mail folders on the email server, hoping not to fuck things up too seriously.
Weak Point Number Three: A total lack of domain management sections
Do we need to bring up the total lack of a contemporary domain administration GUI - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domains' Whois info, secure the Whois info, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a huge drawback. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...
Inconvenience Number Four: Multiple login locations (min 2, max 3)
What about the need for another login to make use of the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support management software solution? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web hosting firm. Sometimes, based on the invoicing platform (particularly designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting firm is availing of, the earnest clients can wind up with two additional login locations (1: the billing/domain management menu; 2: the ticket support interface), winding up with a total of three user login places (including cPanel).
Shortcoming No.5: 120+ web site hosting Control Panel menus to get acquainted with... swiftly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web page hosting Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them swiftly... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting vendors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...