How Does cPanel Hosting Function?
For your info, it's good to know that the majority of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the present-day web hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing niche (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which furnishes a great amount of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing the very same thing: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of 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 difference at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting prices are similar. Quite identical. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/website hosting CP choice. So, there is merely one fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
200k "Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled
The Hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are just a normal fellow who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the website creation processes and the hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domains and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting alternative you can settle on? Of course there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand web hosting service providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ different website hosting brand names in the world will offer you literally the same cPanel website hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the assortment on today's website hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is an immense stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and perhaps fulfilled most website hosting market preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback Number 1: An idiotic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extra watchful not to remove completely 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 quite simple to erase on the server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous 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 erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 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 perplexed? We undoubtedly are!
Weak Side Number 2: The same e-mail folder setup
The email folder configuration on the server is literally the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly enhance their belief in God when handling the email folders on the mail server, hoping not to muck things up too severely.
Negative Point Number 3: A complete lack of domain management user interfaces
Do we need to bring up the thorough shortage of a contemporary domain administration interface - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domain names, change domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not furnish such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's a gigantic disadvantage. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...
Weak Side Number Four: Numerous login places (min two, max three)
How about the need for an additional login to utilize the invoicing, domain and tech support management platform? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based Hosting supplier. Sometimes, depending on the invoicing platform (especially made for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting company is availing of, the ardent customers can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain management menu; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login locations (including cPanel).
Negative Side Number 5: 120+ web hosting Control Panel menus to grasp... rapidly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty departments inside the web hosting CP. It's a superb idea to become familiar with each of them. And you'd better grasp them swiftly... That's very impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting providers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...
| Business | Corporate | Enterprise | Starter |
| 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 |
| $4.42 / month | $7.83 / month | $11.50 / month | $3.25 / month |