How does cpanel hosting work?

For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based website hosting offerings on today's web space hosting marketplace are generated by a quite insubstantial marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing niche, which provides a big number of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing absolutely the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the web site hosting offerings on the whole hosting market provide the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web site hosting price tags are alike. Very much alike. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/hosting CP option. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web space hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...

200,000 "webspace hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded

The web space hosting "variety" and the web site hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely a regular chap who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the site development processes and the hosting platforms, which in fact power the various domains and websites . Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web page hosting option you can choose? Sure there is, these days there are more than two hundred thousand site hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different hosting brand names around the world will offer you absolutely the same cPanel CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present web page hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The web page hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple math demonstrates that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is an enormous stroke of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will take place! Less than one in 50...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based web space hosting solution

Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied all web site hosting industry demands. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weak Side Number One: An idiotic domain name folder setup

If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra careful not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent 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 web hosting server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how good 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 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 name)

Are you becoming baffled? We undoubtedly are!

Negative Aspect Number 2: The very same e-mail folder structure

The electronic mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly enhance their belief in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to muck things up too harshly.

Predicament No.3: An absolute deficiency of domain name manipulation options

Do we need to bring up the thorough lack of a modern domain manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, modify domains' Whois details, protect the Whois details, change/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a considerable downside. An unforgivable one, we wish to add...

Predicament No.4: Numerous login locations (min 2, max three)

How about the demand for an additional login to use the invoicing, domain name and technical support administration platform? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based web page hosting firm. Now and then, based on the invoice transaction platform (principally meant for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting supplier is using, the keen users can wind up with 2 additional login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain administration section; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with an aggregate of three user login places (including cPanel).

Negative Sign No.5: More than a hundred and twenty website hosting CP areas to become acquainted with... rapidly

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

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

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