What Indeed is cPanel Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel Hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are generated by a quite insubstantial marketing segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) dubbed hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small business niche, which generates an enormous number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying literally the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole website hosting marketplace furnish one and the very same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel option. Thus, there is merely one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brand names all over the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
Two hundred thousand "Hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely dubbed
The Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us come down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different web hosting brand names. Imagine you are merely an ordinary guy who's not very well acquainted with (as most of us) with the web page making processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and websites. Are you prepared to make your hosting pick? Is there any web hosting alternative you can decide upon? Of course there is, today there are more than 200k web hosting providers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different hosting brand names in the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel web hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on the current web hosting market is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple math reveals that to chance upon a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a mammoth stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be cruel with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and probably fulfilled all hosting industry demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming Number 1: A stupid domain folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely careful not to delete completely 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 very simple to remove on the server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous 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 delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how excellent cPanel's domain name folder structure is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)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 bewildered? We surely are!
Weakness No.2: The same mail folder configuration
The email folder arrangement on the web server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly fortify their faith in God when managing the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to bungle things up too irreparably.
Negative Sign No.3: A thorough deficiency of domain name management interfaces
Do we have to cite the absolute shortage of a modern domain administration tool - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domain names' Whois information, shield the Whois details, edit/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a great problem. An unjustifiable one, we would like to add...
Negative Sign No.4: Many user login places (min 2, max 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to use the invoicing, domain name and tech support administration user interface? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based Hosting provider. At times, depending on the invoicing system (particularly conceived for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting firm is making use of, the ardent clients can end up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain management platform; 2: the trouble ticket support menu), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login locations (including cPanel).
Weakness Number Five: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel areas to pick up... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the website hosting CP. It's a fine idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them rapidly... That's extremely impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...
| Basic | Ultra | Entry | Delux |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| €3.71 / month | €10.95 / month | €2.83 / month | €8.33 / month |