How Does cPanel Hosting Work?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel Hosting offers on today's web hosting market are generated by a quite insubstantial marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a kind of a small-sized marketing segment, which furnishes a big number of different web hosting brands, yet providing precisely the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the hosting offerings on the entire hosting market offer one and the very same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel Hosting prices are similar. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service practically no other hosting platform/web hosting CP choice. Thus, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200k "Hosting suppliers", all cPanel-based, yet differently dubbed
The Hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google presents to all of us boil down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are simply a normal bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the website creation procedures and the hosting platforms, which actually power the various domains and websites. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Sure there is, right now there are more than 200k web hosting providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200,000+ different web hosting brand names across the world will offer you literally the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, named in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on the present web hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math shows that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting distributor is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that something like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The pros and cons of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably met most web hosting business requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the trick if you have just one domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Weakness No.1: A laughable domain folder system
If you have two or more domains, however, be extra careful not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. See for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain folder configuration 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 name)
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 name)
Are you getting perplexed? We clearly are!
Weak Side Number 2: The very same mail folder system
The email folder configuration on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The admin chaps strongly enhance their faith in God when coping with the mail folders on the electronic mail server, praying not to screw things up too gravely.
Negative Side Number Three: An absolute lack of domain name administration tools
Do we have to cite the total absence of a modern domain name manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domains' Whois info, protect the Whois details, edit/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a considerable disadvantage. An unjustifiable one, we wish to point out...
Negative Sign No.4: Multiple user login locations (min two, maximum 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to utilize the billing, domain name and tech support management user interface? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based Hosting firm. Occasionally, on the basis of the billing platform (particularly developed for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting supplier is making use of, the eager users can end up with 2 additional login locations (1: the billing transaction/domain administration interface; 2: the ticket support GUI), ending up with a total of three user login places (including cPanel).
Predicament Number 5: 120+ web hosting Control Panel sections to get to know... swiftly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty departments inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a glorious idea to grasp each one of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting firms:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...
| Starter | Soho Business | SMB Corporate | Conglomerate |
| 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 |
| $3.42 / month | $4.58 / month | $9.17 / month | $14.50 / month |