How Does cPanel Web Hosting Function?

For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's hosting market are provided by a quite inconsiderable business niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller hosting is a type of a small-scale marketing segment, which furnishes an immense number of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98% of the hosting offers on the entire web hosting marketplace furnish one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/CP choice. Thus, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...

200k "hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled

The hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply an average guy who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the site making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and web portals. Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any web hosting alternative you can select? Sure there is, these days there are more than 200,000 hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ different web hosting brands worldwide will give you exactly the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the assortment on the current hosting market is... Period.

The hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...

The pluses and minuses of the cPanel hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly covered most web hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Negative Side Number One: An idiotic domain folder arrangement

If you have two or more domain names, though, be ultra cautious not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to remove on the web server, because they all are located 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 remove the files of the add-on domains, please. See for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name 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)
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 getting baffled? We undoubtedly are!

Negative Point Number Two: The very same e-mail folder arrangement

The email folder structure on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly enhance their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to screw things up too severely.

Negative Side Number 3: A sheer absence of domain administration GUIs

Do we need to mention the entire absence of a contemporary domain administration interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois info, shield the Whois information, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not provide such a "contemporary" tool at all. That's a major predicament. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...

Inconvenience No.4: Multiple login places (minimum two, maximum 3)

What about the demand for an extra login to avail of the billing, domain name and technical support administration interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel hosting supplier. Occasionally, on the basis of the invoicing transaction tool (particularly developed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting vendor is using, the zealous customers can end up with two additional login locations (1: the billing/domain name management section; 2: the trouble ticket support platform), ending up with a total of 3 login places (including cPanel).

Inconvenience Number 5: More than 120 web hosting CP departments to pick up... rapidly

cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ areas inside the CP. It's a terrific idea to become familiar with each and every one of them. And you'd better grasp them promptly... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting corporations:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...