What Indeed is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel Web Hosting offers on today's web hosting market are supplied by a very insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which furnishes an immense amount of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying precisely the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace furnish the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel Web Hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is merely one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200,000 "Web Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely branded
The Web Hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Assume you are only an ordinary bloke who's not very well acquainted with (as the majority of us) with the site making processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and web pages. Are you ready to make your web hosting decision? Is there any web hosting variant you can pick? Of course there is, at present there are more than 200,000 website hosting providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different website hosting brand names around the world will give you absolutely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the variety on today's web hosting market is... Period.
The Web Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a huge 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 Web Hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably fulfilled most web hosting market prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside Number 1: An imbecilic domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domain names, however, be extremely cautious not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call 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 simple to delete on the server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how good 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 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 getting confused? We doubtlessly are!
Weak Point Number 2: The same e-mail folder setup
The e-mail folder configuration on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly enhance their belief in God when handling the email folders on the e-mail server, praying not to mess things up too irretrievably.
Disadvantage No.3: An absolute absence of domain name management GUIs
Do we have to refer to the sheer lack of a contemporary domain name administration GUI - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois information, shield the Whois info, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a gigantic downside. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...
Weak Side Number 4: Multiple user login locations (min two, max three)
How about the necessity for an extra login to avail of the invoicing transaction, domain name and tech support administration interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel Web Hosting distributor. Now and then, based on the invoicing transaction tool (particularly created for cPanel solely) the cPanel Web Hosting distributor is utilizing, the avid customers can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain management tool; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of three login locations (counting cPanel).
Drawback Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting CP areas to get familiar with... promptly
cPanel presents to your attention 120+ departments inside the website hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's inordinately arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, 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? Remark that one as well...
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| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 1 website hosted | 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $5.57 / month | $8.75 / month | $21.25 / month | $17.08 / month |