How does cpanel web site hosting work?

For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel web page hosting offers on the current web space hosting market are provided by a very insubstantial marketing segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller webspace hosting is a type of a small-size marketing segment, which generates an enormous number of different web hosting brands, yet providing strictly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire web page hosting market offer one and the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based website hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service practically no other web page hosting platform/site hosting CP alternative. So, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200,000 webspace hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...

200,000 "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed

The site hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely a regular chap who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the web space hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domains and websites . Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any hosting variant you can decide upon? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than two hundred thousand hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web site hosting brand names worldwide will give you precisely the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, named differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the current web site hosting market is... Period.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel-based site hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps fulfilled most website hosting market preconditions. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Problem Number 1: A laughable domain folder arrangement

If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely watchful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to erase on the 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 is a folder placed 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. Observe for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain 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 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)
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 growing nonplussed? We positively are!

Weakness No.2: The very same e-mail folder structure

The mail folder configuration on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly increase their faith in God when coping with the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to bungle things up too gravely.

Disadvantage Number Three: An absolute absence of domain name management options

Do we need to point out the sheer shortage of a modern domain management GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domain names' Whois info, secure the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" tool at all. That's a vast downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...

Downside No.4: Many login places (min two, maximum 3)

What about the need for an extra login to access the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support management section? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based webspace hosting service provider. Sometimes, based on the billing system (especially designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting provider is using, the earnest users can end up with two extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).

Negative Side No.5: More than one hundred and twenty web site hosting CP menus to memorize... fast

cPanel presents for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the web space hosting Control Panel. It's a fabulous idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better get to know them promptly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting service providers:

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