What In Fact is cPanel Hosting?
For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the contemporary hosting marketplace are provided by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as annual money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which supplies an immense amount of different web hosting brands, yet providing one and the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace provide the very same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are similar. Quite similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is just a single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, note that one...
200,000 "Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
The Hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offerings" Google shows to us boil down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are only an average guy who's not very well familiar with (as most of us) with the web page making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and sites. Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any website hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, these days there are more than 200,000 website hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brands around the world will give you precisely the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the current web hosting market is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly satisfied all web hosting industry requirements. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Predicament No.1: A ludicrous domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra cautious not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to remove on the hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 name)
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)
Are you becoming confused? We definitely are!
Drawback Number Two: The very same email folder arrangement
The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to bungle things up too irreparably.
Weak Point Number Three: An absolute deficiency of domain administration sections
Do we have to refer to the sheer absence of a contemporary domain management user interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domain names, modify domains' Whois details, secure the Whois info, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a gigantic weakness. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Inconvenience Number Four: Many user login places (min 2, max 3)
How about the need for an additional login to access the billing transaction, domain and tech support administration GUI? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based Hosting supplier. Sometimes, based on the billing transaction tool (particularly conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting vendor is using, the ardent users can end up with two extra login places (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name management tool; 2: the ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).
Downside Number Five: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel sections to get to know... briskly
cPanel presents to your attention 120+ areas inside the CP. It's a marvelous idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them fast... That's inordinately arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...
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