How does cpanel hosting work?

For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel site hosting offerings on the current web site hosting market are generated by a quite unsubstantial marketing niche (when it comes to annual money flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller webspace hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing segment, which generates a huge number of different web hosting brands, yet supplying precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web page hosting offers on the whole site hosting marketplace offer one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web page hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/hosting CP option. Thus, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200,000 webspace hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, remark that one...

200k "webspace hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named

The web site hosting "variety" and the hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web site hosting brand names. Imagine you are just a normal guy who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site development procedures and the site hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web page hosting variant you can choose? Sure there is, at present there are more than 200,000 website hosting firms in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique web page hosting brand names worldwide will give you the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, dubbed in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on today's web space hosting marketplace is... Period.

The web page hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in

Simple math shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...

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

Let's not be relentless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably satisfied all webspace hosting business demands. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Weak Side No.1: A laughable domain name folder system

If you have two or more domains, though, be extra watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very simple to remove on the hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Check for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain folder structure 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)
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 growing bewildered? We absolutely are!

Weak Point No.2: The same mail folder setup

The electronic mail folder structure on the hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly reinforce their faith in God when tackling the email folders on the mail server, praying not to botch things up too irreparably.

Weak Side Number Three: An utter lack of domain management GUIs

Do we need to mention the entire absence of a modern domain manipulation user interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domains' Whois info, protect the Whois information, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a great predicament. An unforgivable one, we wish to point out...

Predicament No.4: Multiple user login locations (minimum 2, max three)

What about the demand for an extra login to utilize the invoicing transaction, domain name and technical support management section? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web site hosting firm. Sometimes, depending on the invoice transaction system (principally devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting distributor is utilizing, the earnest clients can end up with two extra logins (1: the billing transaction/domain administration section; 2: the ticket support software platform), winding up with an aggregate of three user login places (including cPanel).

Negative Side No.5: More than 120 web site hosting CP menus to grasp... rapidly

cPanel offers for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the webspace hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to memorize each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them rapidly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

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

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