How does cpanel-based web hosting function?
For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel site hosting offerings on the current web site hosting market are provided by a quite unsubstantial business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-scale marketing niche, which furnishes an immense number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying the very same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the web space hosting offers on the entire web hosting market supply the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are alike. Very identical. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web site hosting platform/web hosting CP option. Thus, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k web space hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "web hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The site hosting "diversity" and the site hosting "offers" Google presents to us boil down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply an ordinary person who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page making processes and the web space hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domains and web portals . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any web site hosting option you can opt for? Of course there is, these days there are more than two hundred thousand web page hosting firms out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique site hosting brands in the world will give you exactly the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on today's webspace hosting market is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a gigantic stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based webspace hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably met all web hosting industry preconditions. In short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Point Number One: A ludicrous domain folder structure
If you have two or more domains, though, be extremely attentive not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call 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 simple to remove on the server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Decide for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder system 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 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 name)
Are you getting confused? We doubtlessly are!
Weak Point Number Two: The very same email folder setup
The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The admin blokes strongly fortify their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to mess things up too harshly.
Shortcoming No.3: A complete lack of domain name manipulation tools
Do we have to mention the utter absence of a contemporary domain name management menu - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, edit domains' Whois information, shield the Whois information, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" menu at all. That's a vast problem. An inexcusable one, we wish to add...
Disadvantage No.4: Multiple user login places (min 2, max three)
How about the demand for another login to use the invoicing, domain name and technical support management software? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web hosting provider. Sometimes, depending on the invoice transaction platform (particularly meant for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting provider is using, the avid users can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain management interface; 2: the ticket support user interface), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Drawback Number Five: 120+ website hosting CP sections to become familiar with... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web space hosting CP. It's a fabulous idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better memorize them fast... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting corporations:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...