How does cpanel web hosting work?

For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based website hosting offerings on the current web space hosting market are furnished by a quite insignificant marketing niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller webspace hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which provides a huge amount of different web hosting brands, yet providing strictly the same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the webspace hosting offerings on the entire web space hosting marketplace furnish precisely the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel web page hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Giving those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is merely one single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...

200k "website hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed

The web space hosting "variety" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google shows to us boil down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web space hosting brand names. Imagine you are just a regular chap who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the web site hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and web pages . Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any webspace hosting variant you can decide upon? Of course there is, today there are more than 200k web page hosting service providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different hosting brand names across the world will give you literally the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on today's web space hosting market is... Period.

The website hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple arithmetic shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a gigantic stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel web site hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied all web page hosting business demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Drawback Number 1: A stupid domain folder system

If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extremely attentive not to remove entirely 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 very easy to delete on the server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how wonderful 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)
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 becoming puzzled? We undoubtedly are!

Predicament No.2: The very same mail folder system

The electronic mail folder configuration on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly reinforce their faith in God when handling the email folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to fuck things up too irreparably.

Inconvenience Number Three: A complete deficiency of domain administration GUIs

Do we have to refer to the thorough deficiency of a modern domain name administration GUI - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois info, protect the Whois info, modify/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a mammoth disadvantage. An unpardonable one, we would like to point out...

Negative Point No.4: Multiple login places (min 2, max three)

What about the need for an extra login to make use 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 web space hosting company. Now and then, on the basis of the invoicing transaction system (particularly tailored for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting service provider is availing of, the devoted clients can end up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Negative Side Number Five: More than a hundred and twenty web page hosting Control Panel sections to get to know... quickly

cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the web space hosting Control Panel. It's a marvelous idea to pick up each and every one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them briskly... That's quite insolent on cPanel's side.

With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based website hosting companies:

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