How does cpanel-based site hosting work?

For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel web page hosting offers on the current web space hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insubstantial business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which provides a big amount of different web hosting brands, yet providing precisely the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offerings on the whole hosting market offer the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel site hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other site hosting platform/webspace hosting Control Panel choice. Thus, there is only one fact: out of more than 200k webspace hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly dubbed

The web space hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to just one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Assume you are just an ordinary chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the site development procedures and the site hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any hosting alternative you can opt for? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200k web space hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different website hosting brands across the world will give you strictly the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the contemporary web site hosting market is... Period.

The site hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...

The positive and negative sides of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably fulfilled all website hosting industry requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weak Point Number 1: A stupid domain name folder structure

If you have two or more domain names, however, be very cautious not to erase completely 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). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web hosting server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known 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 attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder system 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)
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 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 getting puzzled? We doubtlessly are!

Negative Sign No.2: The same e-mail folder arrangement

The electronic mail folder structure on the web hosting server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly reinforce their faith in God when managing the email folders on the mail server, praying not to botch things up too irretrievably.

Negative Sign Number 3: An absolute deficiency of domain administration GUIs

Do we need to mention the total absence of a modern domain name administration menu - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois info, shield the Whois details, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a great inconvenience. An unpardonable one, we want to point out...

Negative Point Number Four: Many user login locations (min 2, max 3)

What about the demand for another login to make use of the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support administration GUI? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web page hosting firm. Occasionally, based on the invoice transaction platform (especially devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting corporation is availing of, the eager clients can end up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing transaction/domain management interface; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).

Negative Sign No.5: More than 120 website hosting Control Panel sections to become familiar with... promptly

cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the CP. It's a terrific idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better learn them rapidly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.

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

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