What Exactly is cPanel Web Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based Web Hosting offers on today's web hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite insignificant marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small business segment, which supplies a vast number of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing literally the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace supply one and the very same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel Web Hosting prices are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "Web Hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
The Web Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just a normal bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domain names and web portals. Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web hosting alternative you can pick? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than 200k web hosting distributors in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brand names all over the world will give you exactly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, dubbed in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on today's web hosting market is... Period.
The Web Hosting LOTTERY we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a big strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based Web Hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably covered all website hosting business requirements. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Downside Number One: A moronic domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely attentive not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to delete on the hosting server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed 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. Observe for yourself how good cPanel's domain name folder setup 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 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 name)
Are you getting perplexed? We undeniably are!
Downside No.2: The same e-mail folder setup
The mail folder configuration on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin blokes firmly increase their faith in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to muck things up too badly.
Weakness Number Three: An absolute absence of domain manipulation sections
Do we need to cite the total lack of a contemporary domain name administration menu - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois details, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" user interface at all. That's an enormous disadvantage. An inexcusable one, we would like to point out...
Negative Sign Number 4: Many login locations (min two, max three)
What about the necessity for an extra login to utilize the billing, domain and technical support administration GUI? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based Web Hosting service provider. Now and then, depending on the invoicing transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel Web Hosting firm is making use of, the keen clients can wind up with two extra login places (1: the invoicing/domain management system; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Negative Side Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting CP areas to memorize... quickly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty menus inside the website hosting CP. It's a fine idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them briskly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Web Hosting vendors:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...
| Business | Corporate | Standard | Enterprise | Small Business |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | 300 GB storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | 3 TB bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 2 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $7.58 / month | $11.00 / month | $5.75 / month | $12.00 / month | $4.67 / month |