What is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are furnished by a quite unsubstantial business niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-scale business segment, which furnishes an enormous quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering exactly the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the website hosting offers on the whole web hosting marketplace provide precisely the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel Hosting prices are similar. Quite identical. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service almost no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP alternative. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offerings" Google shows to all of us come down to just one solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different web hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are only a normal bloke who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the website creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and web portals. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting alternative you can select? Of course there is, as of now there are more than 200,000 website hosting corporations out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique web hosting brands in the world will give you the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the current web hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is an immense stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and possibly fulfilled most website hosting industry prerequisites. In brief, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming Number One: A moronic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely attentive not to erase entirely 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 domains are very simple to remove on the server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Discover for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder system 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)
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 confused? We undeniably are!
Negative Sign No.2: The very same mail folder configuration
The mail folder structure on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly fortify their faith in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to mess things up too seriously.
Weak Side No.3: An absolute shortage of domain name administration user interfaces
Do we need to mention the thorough deficiency of a modern domain administration user interface - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, alter domains' Whois details, secure the Whois information, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not have such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a great drawback. An unforgivable one, we want to add...
Problem No.4: Numerous user login places (minimum two, max three)
How about the demand for an additional login to avail of the billing, domain name and tech support administration platform? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based Hosting firm. At times, on the basis of the billing transaction platform (principally tailored for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting supplier is using, the zealous users can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain management software; 2: the ticket support interface), winding up with a total of three user login locations (including cPanel).
Predicament Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel sections to pick up... promptly
cPanel offers to your attention 120+ menus inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's an excellent idea to become familiar with each of them. And you'd better pick them up swiftly... That's inordinately arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting firms:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...
| Starter | Business | Corporate | Enterprise |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| 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 |
| $3.02 / month | $3.96 / month | $8.83 / month | $12.75 / month |