What is cPanel Web Hosting?

For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's website hosting market are supplied by a quite inconsiderable business niche (as far as annual money flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which furnishes a great number of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing absolutely the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/Control Panel option. So, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly dubbed

The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an ordinary bloke who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the site development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and websites. Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can pick? Of course there is, as of now there are more than two hundred thousand hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different website hosting brands worldwide will offer you absolutely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the present web hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...

The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably fulfilled most hosting market requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weakness Number 1: A dumb domain folder configuration

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely attentive not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to erase on the hosting server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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)
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)

Are you growing confused? We undeniably are!

Weakness Number 2: The same mail folder arrangement

The email folder structure on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys firmly fortify their faith in God when coping with the mail folders on the email server, hoping not to screw things up too irretrievably.

Downside Number Three: A total shortage of domain management menus

Do we need to bring up the complete lack of a modern domain management platform - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, alter domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois information, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a huge weakness. An unforgettable one, we would like to add...

Downside Number Four: Multiple user login places (min two, max 3)

How about the demand for an additional login to avail of the billing transaction, domain name and technical support management software platform? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based hosting firm. Now and then, based on the billing transaction system (especially devised for cPanel solely) the cPanel hosting provider is utilizing, the devoted customers can wind up with two extra login places (1: the billing/domain administration system; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of three user login places (counting cPanel).

Drawback Number Five: 120+ web hosting CP sections to memorize... promptly

cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the CP. It's a fine idea to memorize each of them. And you'd better grasp them swiftly... That's extremely arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting providers:

As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...