How does cpanel-based web hosting function?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based webspace hosting offers on the present-day webspace hosting market are provided by a quite unsubstantial marketing niche (when it comes to annual money flow) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-size marketing niche, which provides a huge number of different web hosting brand names, yet offering strictly the same solutions: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web page hosting offers on the whole web hosting market offer literally the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel web hosting prices are alike. Very much alike. Giving those who need a top web hosting service practically no other site hosting platform/web space hosting CP option. So, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200,000 web site hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2, note that one...
200k "hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The web site hosting "variety" and the hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different webspace hosting brand names. Suppose you are merely a regular bloke who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site creation processes and the webspace hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domain names and web sites . Are you prepared to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web hosting variant you can pick? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 site hosting distributors out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different site hosting brand names all over the world will give you exactly the same cPanel web page hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the present hosting marketplace is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...
The upsides and downsides of the cPanel webspace hosting solution
Let's not be cruel with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably met most site hosting industry preconditions. 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...
Problem Number One: A foolish domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, though, be ultra cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain 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. Determine for yourself how good cPanel's domain name folder structure 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 name)
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 getting baffled? We positively are!
Weak Point Number 2: The very same electronic mail folder setup
The mail folder structure on the server is literally the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly strengthen their faith in God when managing the email folders on the e-mail server, praying not to fuck things up too severely.
Negative Point No.3: An entire absence of domain name management interfaces
Do we have to point out the utter deficiency of a contemporary domain name manipulation user interface - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domain names, change domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not have such a "modern" interface at all. That's a great drawback. An unpardonable one, we want to point out...
Negative Sign Number Four: Multiple user login locations (minimum 2, maximum three)
What about the need for another login to make use of the billing, domain name and technical support management software? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based web site hosting service provider. Sometimes, depending on the billing system (particularly designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting firm is using, the enthusiastic users can wind up with two extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with a total of three login places (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience No.5: More than one hundred and twenty site hosting CP departments to pick up... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 areas inside the hosting CP. It's a remarkable idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them swiftly... That's way too impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web hosting service providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...