How does cpanel-based website hosting work?

For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on the present hosting market are generated by a very insubstantial marketing segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small business segment, which supplies a huge number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying strictly the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the web space hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel website hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other site hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web page hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...

200,000 "web site hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named

The web space hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google presents to all of us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a regular person who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the site hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and web sites . Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any web space hosting variant you can opt for? Of course there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different hosting brands all over the world will give you the same cPanel site hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the diversity on the present-day website hosting marketplace is... Period.

The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple arithmetic reveals that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will happen! Less than one in fifty...

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

Let's not be severe with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably satisfied all website hosting industry prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Problem Number 1: A moronic domain folder system

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra cautious not to remove 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 name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to remove on the hosting server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very 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 delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how good cPanel's domain folder arrangement is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)
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 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)

Are you growing baffled? We certainly are!

Weak Point No.2: The very same email folder system

The e-mail folder configuration on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin guys strongly increase their belief in God when managing the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to fuck things up too seriously.

Weak Point Number Three: A sheer lack of domain name management options

Do we need to cite the utter lack of a contemporary domain name administration interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois details, shield the Whois info, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not include such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a great inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...

Inconvenience Number 4: Numerous user login locations (min two, max three)

How about the need for an additional login to utilize the billing, domain name and technical support administration software solution? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web site hosting vendor. Occasionally, based on the invoice transaction platform (principally meant for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting corporation is utilizing, the zealous customers can wind up with two extra logins (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration tool; 2: the ticket support interface), ending up with a total of three user login locations (counting cPanel).

Weak Point Number 5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP sections to learn... fast

cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 sections inside the webspace hosting CP. It's a superb idea to learn each of them. And you'd better learn them fast... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based web site hosting distributors:

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