How cPanel Hosting Functions

For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on today's hosting market are provided by a quite insignificant business segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-scale marketing segment, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offers on the whole web hosting market provide strictly the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based web hosting price tags are alike. Very much alike. Giving those who need a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/hosting CP option. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mark that one...

Two hundred thousand "web hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely labeled

The web hosting "variety" and the hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us boil down to just one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Assume you are only an ordinary bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page creation processes and the hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domain names and sites. Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any hosting variant you can choose? Of course there is, right now there are more than 200,000 hosting distributors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand different web hosting brands across the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, named in a different way, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the present hosting market is... Full stop.

The web hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple mathematics demonstrates that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...

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

Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably met most web hosting industry requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...

Negative Side Number 1: A ludicrous domain name folder setup

If you have two or more domains, though, be extremely careful not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite popular 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Decide for yourself how amazing cPanel's domain name folder setup is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is placed)
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)
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 growing confused? We certainly are!

Weakness Number Two: The very same mail folder setup

The mail folder structure on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same error twice?!? The admin guys strongly increase their faith in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to mess things up too irretrievably.

Negative Sign Number Three: A sheer absence of domain management options

Do we need to mention the complete lack of a contemporary domain name manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois details, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" user interface at all. That's an immense inconvenience. An inexcusable one, we want to add...

Weakness Number Four: Multiple login places (minimum 2, maximum 3)

How about the need for an additional login to utilize the billing, domain name and tech support management platform? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel web hosting firm. At times, depending on the invoicing tool (especially intended for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting company is utilizing, the zealous users can end up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management tool; 2: the ticket support user interface), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (counting cPanel).

Predicament No.5: More than 120 CP sections to learn... rapidly

cPanel presents to your attention 120+ menus inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a fine idea to learn each of them. And you'd better get to know them rapidly... That's quite impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web hosting firms:

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