cPanel Hosting Unmasked

For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel hosting offerings on today's hosting market are provided by a very unsubstantial business niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small business niche, which generates a vast amount of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing strictly the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace supply strictly the same solution: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/CP alternative. So, there is simply a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mark that one...

200k "hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled

The hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different hosting brand names. Imagine you are simply a regular fellow who's not very well acquainted with (as most 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 website hosting alternative you can select? Of course there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting providers in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different website hosting brand names around the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the assortment on the contemporary web hosting marketplace is... Period.

The hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in

Simple math shows that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an immense stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will occur! Less than one in 50...

The strong and weak sides of the cPanel-based hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably met most web hosting business demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weak Side Number 1: A foolish domain folder configuration

If you have two or more domain names, however, be extremely cautious not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to remove on the 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 name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Check for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain folder configuration 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 name)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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 growing nonplussed? We surely are!

Weakness Number Two: The same email folder system

The mail folder arrangement on the server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly fortify their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to botch things up too badly.

Negative Sign No.3: A total deficiency of domain name management interfaces

Do we need to point out the complete lack of a modern domain administration tool - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not contain such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a big inconvenience. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...

Disadvantage Number Four: Numerous login locations (min two, max three)

What about the demand for an extra login to use the billing transaction, domain name and tech support management platform? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based hosting provider. Now and then, based on the billing platform (especially devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel hosting service provider is utilizing, the earnest clients can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain management interface; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), winding up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).

Weakness Number 5: More than 120 web hosting CP sections to get to know... promptly

cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 areas inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them quickly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.

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

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