How does cpanel web site hosting work?

For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web page hosting offerings on the contemporary web hosting market are generated by a very unsubstantial business niche (when it comes to yearly money flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller web space hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which furnishes a great amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing one and the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the webspace hosting offerings on the whole hosting market provide strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel web space hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web site hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel option. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web space hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "web page hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled

The site hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are just a normal fellow who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web site creation procedures and the web site hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and websites . Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web space hosting variant you can settle on? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than 200,000 web site hosting providers out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brand names around the world will offer you literally the same cPanel web space hosting Control Panel and platform, branded in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the current webspace hosting market is... Period.

The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple math shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a colossal stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web page hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably covered all web hosting business preconditions. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weak Side No.1: An idiotic domain folder setup

If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extra attentive not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to delete on the server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how marvelous 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 growing puzzled? We surely are!

Negative Point Number 2: The very same e-mail folder configuration

The mail folder configuration on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly fortify their belief in God when coping with the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to botch things up too seriously.

Weakness Number Three: A complete lack of domain administration menus

Do we need to mention the total shortage of a modern domain name administration platform - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a considerable downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...

Negative Aspect No.4: Multiple user login locations (minimum 2, maximum 3)

How about the need for an additional login to avail of the billing, domain and technical support management system? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web site hosting firm. At times, depending on the invoicing platform (particularly conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting company is using, the keen users can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name administration GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login places (including cPanel).

Downside Number Five: 120+ web hosting CP departments to memorize... promptly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the web site hosting CP. It's a wonderful idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them quickly... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.

With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web site hosting corporations:

As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one too...