How does cpanel web hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel website hosting offers on the present-day website hosting marketplace are supplied by a very unsubstantial marketing niche (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web page hosting is a type of a small marketing niche, which supplies a big quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying precisely the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web page hosting offers on the whole website hosting marketplace provide strictly the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web page hosting prices are alike. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web site hosting platform/webspace hosting CP alternative. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The website hosting "variety" and the web page hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely a regular person who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the website making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any site hosting option you can settle on? Sure there is, today there are more than 200,000 web hosting service providers out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different site hosting brands across the world will offer you literally the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the assortment on the contemporary hosting market is... Period.
The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel web page hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps covered all website hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback No.1: A foolish domain folder arrangement
If you have two or more domain names, however, be very cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located 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. Check for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)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 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)
Are you getting puzzled? We positively are!
Negative Point No.2: The same e-mail folder system
The mail folder structure on the server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes firmly enhance their belief in God when dealing with the email folders on the email server, praying not to botch things up too harshly.
Weakness Number Three: An entire deficiency of domain name management user interfaces
Do we need to mention the entire lack of a contemporary domain management user interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domains' Whois info, shield the Whois details, change/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a colossal inconvenience. An inexcusable one, we would like to add...
Downside Number Four: Numerous login locations (min 2, maximum 3)
How about the need for an extra login to make use of the invoicing, domain and tech support management software? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web page hosting supplier. Now and then, based on the billing transaction tool (principally meant for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting distributor is availing of, the ardent customers can end up with two extra login places (1: the invoicing/domain administration user interface; 2: the ticket support software solution), winding up with a total of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Inconvenience Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web site hosting Control Panel sections to get acquainted with... briskly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the hosting CP. It's a fine idea to become acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them quickly... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting vendors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...