What Precisely is cPanel Website Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel Website Hosting offers on the present-day web hosting marketplace are generated by a quite unsubstantial marketing segment (as far as annual cash flow is concerned) known as reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-scale business segment, which supplies a huge number of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing one and the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the website hosting offers on the entire website hosting market provide exactly the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Website Hosting price tags are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200k website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200k "Website Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The Website Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to us come down to just one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are only an ordinary guy who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the site making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domain names and web pages. Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any web hosting alternative you can decide upon? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 website hosting companies in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique website hosting brand names around the world will give you exactly the same cPanel hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the variety on the current web hosting marketplace is... Period.
The Website Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple mathematics reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a gigantic strike of luck. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The strong and weak points of the cPanel Website Hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and possibly satisfied all website hosting industry requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Drawback Number 1: An idiotic domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be very careful not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to erase 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 located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Examine for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder structure 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 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)
Are you growing confused? We certainly are!
Negative Side Number Two: The same e-mail folder setup
The mail folder configuration on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly strengthen their faith in God when tackling the mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to screw things up too fatally.
Downside No.3: A total shortage of domain name administration options
Do we have to cite the total absence of a modern domain administration GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domains' Whois information, protect the Whois details, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not have such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a gigantic shortcoming. An unforgivable one, we want to point out...
Weak Point No.4: Multiple login locations (minimum two, max 3)
How about the necessity for an additional login to access the invoicing transaction, domain name and tech support administration user interface? That's beside the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel Website Hosting corporation. Now and then, based on the invoicing transaction system (particularly conceived for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Website Hosting vendor is utilizing, the earnest users can end up with two extra login locations (1: the invoicing transaction/domain administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with a total of 3 login locations (counting cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: More than a hundred and twenty hosting Control Panel sections to get acquainted with... fast
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better grasp them fast... That's excessively arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Website Hosting suppliers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...
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| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
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| £3.99 / month | £7.99 / month | £9.99 / month | £2.99 / month |