cPanel Hosting Unmasked

For your information, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based web hosting offers on the present-day web hosting market are provided by a very insignificant marketing segment (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) named reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small-scale marketing segment, which supplies a big amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing exactly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting market furnish one and the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are alike. Very similar. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel option. So, there is just one fact: out of more than 200k hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, note that one...

200k "web hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled

The web hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us boil down to just one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are only an ordinary bloke who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the website development processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domain names and sites. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting option you can decide upon? Of course there is, at present there are more than 200k hosting corporations in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brand names around the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the assortment on today's website hosting market is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of

Simple mathematics shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a great stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...

The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based web hosting solution

Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably satisfied most web hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weak Side Number 1: A foolish domain folder structure

If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extremely cautious not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to remove on the web server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Decide for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain name 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)
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 disorientated? We categorically are!

Predicament No.2: The very same electronic mail folder configuration

The email folder structure on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The admin boys strongly reinforce their belief in God when managing the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to muck things up too fatally.

Drawback Number 3: A total shortage of domain name administration sections

Do we have to point out the total absence of a modern domain name manipulation user interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or administer domains, change domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois info, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" menu at all. That's an enormous disadvantage. An unpardonable one, we wish to add...

Weak Point Number 4: Multiple login places (min 2, max 3)

How about the demand for another login to access the billing, domain name and technical support administration system? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel web hosting supplier. Now and then, based on the invoicing transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting distributor is availing of, the avid customers can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support software), winding up with a total of 3 login places (including cPanel).

Inconvenience Number Five: More than 120 website hosting CP sections to grasp... rapidly

cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 areas inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to grasp each and every one of them. And you'd better learn them promptly... That's very arrogant on cPanel's side.

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

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