How Does cPanel Hosting Function?
For your info, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel Hosting offerings on the present-day web hosting marketplace are furnished by a very inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small business niche, which supplies an immense amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering absolutely the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the entire hosting market offer literally the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting prices are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/CP choice. So, there is just a single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, remark that one...
Two hundred thousand "Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet differently named
The Hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offerings" Google reveals to all of us come down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are simply a regular bloke who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any web hosting option you can select? Of course there is, as of now there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ unique web hosting brand names across the world will give you the very same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on the current website hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a colossal stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The strengths and weaknesses of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly covered all web hosting market demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside No.1: An imbecilic domain name folder arrangement
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely watchful not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web server, since they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite well known 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 remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. See for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name 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)
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 certainly are!
Drawback Number Two: The very same e-mail folder system
The mail folder configuration on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin chaps strongly fortify their belief in God when tackling the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to mess things up too severely.
Shortcoming Number Three: An utter absence of domain name management tools
Do we have to refer to the sheer lack of a contemporary domain management menu - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois info, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a great inconvenience. An unforgettable one, we wish to add...
Weak Side Number 4: Multiple login locations (minimum two, max three)
How about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoicing transaction, domain name and tech support administration tool? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based Hosting supplier. Now and then, depending on the billing transaction platform (principally invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting firm is utilizing, the zealous users can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management GUI; 2: the ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Problem Number Five: 120+ web hosting CP sections to get familiar with... rapidly
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 menus inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to grasp each one of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's quite insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, 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? Note that one as well...
| Business | Corporate | Starter | Enterprise |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $4.71 / month | $8.67 / month | $3.02 / month | $10.54 / month |