How does cpanel-based site hosting work?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web space hosting offers on the contemporary web site hosting market are furnished by a quite insubstantial marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller webspace hosting is a sort of a small marketing niche, which generates an enormous number of different web hosting brands, yet offering literally the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole site hosting market offer the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based webspace hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Giving those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web page hosting platform/CP option. Thus, there is just one fact: out of more than 200,000 hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200,000 "hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely named
The site hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are only an ordinary fellow who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the web page hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and sites . Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any website hosting option you can choose? Sure there is, these days there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting corporations in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web page hosting brands all over the world will offer you the same cPanel web space hosting CP and platform, dubbed differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on today's web site hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a great strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will occur! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly satisfied all web page hosting market prerequisites. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Shortcoming No.1: A foolish domain folder structure
If you have two or more domains, though, be very careful not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to erase on the web hosting 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 name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)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 name)
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)
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 growing bewildered? We certainly are!
Problem Number 2: The same mail folder structure
The mail folder structure on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly increase their faith in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the email server, praying not to bungle things up too seriously.
Problem No.3: A total deficiency of domain management user interfaces
Do we have to refer to the thorough lack of a contemporary domain name administration user interface - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, alter domains' Whois details, protect the Whois info, edit/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a gigantic shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Point Number 4: Multiple user login locations (minimum two, max three)
How about the need for another login to avail of the invoicing, domain and technical support administration interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web space hosting company. At times, on the basis of the invoicing transaction tool (especially invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is utilizing, the keen users can end up with two extra login locations (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management software; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), winding up with an aggregate of three user login places (counting cPanel).
Weakness Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty CP areas to learn... fast
cPanel offers for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the web page hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to memorize each and every one of them. And you'd better become acquainted with them promptly... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...