How cPanel Web Hosting Works
For your information, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel Web Hosting offers on the contemporary website hosting market are provided by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-sized marketing niche, which provides an enormous number of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing precisely the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market offer precisely the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Web Hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/web hosting CP choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "Web Hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The Web Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just an average bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site development procedures and the hosting platforms, which actually power the different domain names and web pages. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can opt for? Of course there is, now there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique web hosting brand names all over the world will offer you the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on today's web hosting market is... Full stop.
The Web Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel Web Hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly covered most web hosting market requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Negative Side Number 1: A ludicrous domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extremely careful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the hosting server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, 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 delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 name)
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 name)
Are you becoming confused? We doubtlessly are!
Negative Aspect Number Two: The very same e-mail folder configuration
The mail folder structure on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin chums strongly enhance their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too fatally.
Weakness Number Three: A complete shortage of domain name manipulation interfaces
Do we have to cite the complete deficiency of a contemporary domain name administration menu - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, change domains' Whois information, secure the Whois information, modify/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a vast problem. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...
Inconvenience No.4: Multiple user login locations (minimum 2, maximum three)
How about the need for another login to access the billing transaction, domain name and tech support management user interface? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel Web Hosting vendor. At times, depending on the invoicing transaction tool (particularly devised for cPanel only) the cPanel Web Hosting company is using, the avid customers can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain administration software; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Inconvenience Number 5: 120+ website hosting Control Panel departments to pick up... promptly
cPanel offers to your attention 120+ departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a fine idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better get to know them briskly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Web Hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...