How Does cPanel Hosting Operate?
For your info, it's good to be aware that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite unsubstantial business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-scale business niche, which supplies a big amount of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying literally the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market supply absolutely the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting price tags are identical. Quite identical. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is merely one single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "Hosting vendors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled
The Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us boil down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are only an ordinary fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and web pages. Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any website hosting variant you can pick? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200k web hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand different hosting brand names in the world will offer you precisely the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on the present-day website hosting market is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple math shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly fulfilled all website hosting industry requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Predicament Number One: A foolish domain folder setup
If you have two or more domains, however, be extra cautious not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to 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 delete on the web server, because they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located 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. Examine for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain 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)
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 baffled? We certainly are!
Shortcoming No.2: The same mail folder structure
The e-mail folder structure on the server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin blokes strongly reinforce their faith in God when managing the mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to botch things up too fatally.
Negative Aspect No.3: A thorough absence of domain name manipulation GUIs
Do we need to bring up the entire lack of a modern domain management GUI - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, modify domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois information, edit/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not furnish such a "modern" interface at all. That's a major drawback. An unjustifiable one, we would like to add...
Weak Point Number Four: Numerous login locations (minimum 2, max 3)
How about the demand for an additional login to use the billing, domain name and tech support administration software? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based Hosting provider. Now and then, based on the invoicing tool (particularly invented for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting vendor is availing of, the eager customers can end up with two additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain management menu; 2: the ticket support system), winding up with an aggregate of three user login places (including cPanel).
Weak Point No.5: More than a hundred and twenty CP departments to become acquainted with... swiftly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 sections inside the Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better memorize them swiftly... That's excessively impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting companies:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...
| Business | Professional | Enterprise | Startup |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $3.92 / month | $8.67 / month | $12.50 / month | $3.00 / month |