cPanel Hosting Unmasked
For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the current web hosting marketplace are generated by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) named hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-scale business segment, which provides a huge amount of different web hosting brands, yet supplying literally the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the whole website hosting marketplace furnish literally the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP option. Thus, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200k hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
Unlimited bandwidth
1 website hosted
30-Day Free Trial
Unlimited bandwidth
5 websites hosted
30-Day Free Trial
The hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Suppose you are simply an average fellow who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domains and online portals. Are you ready to make your web hosting choice? Is there any website hosting option you can choose? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting distributors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brand names all over the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on today's website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a mammoth strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly fulfilled most website hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Disadvantage No.1: A stupid domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra watchful not to erase completely 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to remove on the server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous 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. Check for yourself how good cPanel's domain 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 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)
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 baffled? We unquestionably are!
Predicament Number 2: The same e-mail folder configuration
The electronic mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly increase their belief in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the mail server, praying not to mess things up too irreparably.
Downside No.3: An utter lack of domain name management options
Do we have to refer to the utter shortage of a modern domain name manipulation platform - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois details, modify/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" tool at all. That's an enormous weakness. An unpardonable one, we would like to add...
Negative Sign Number 4: Many user login places (min 2, max 3)
What about the necessity for an additional login to access the invoice transaction, domain and technical support administration interface? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel hosting firm. Occasionally, depending on the billing platform (principally built for cPanel only) the cPanel hosting service provider is making use of, the keen clients can wind up with two extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain name management GUI; 2: the ticket support software platform), winding up with an aggregate of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Predicament No.5: More than one hundred and twenty hosting Control Panel departments to become acquainted with... swiftly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ departments inside the hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to memorize each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's extremely insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based hosting distributors:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...