What Precisely is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the contemporary website hosting market are generated by a quite insubstantial marketing segment (when it comes to annual capital flow) known as hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a sort of a small-sized marketing segment, which supplies a vast quantity of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing strictly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the entire web hosting marketplace supply absolutely the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting prices are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is only one single fact: out of more than 200k hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200k "Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded
The Hosting "diversity" and the hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Suppose you are merely an ordinary person who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the different domains and online portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any website hosting variant you can settle on? Sure there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand hosting vendors out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ unique web hosting brand names worldwide will offer you exactly the same cPanel CP and platform, named differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the contemporary website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple mathematics reveals that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a gigantic stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps satisfied all website hosting market requirements. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside Number 1: A foolish domain name folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, however, be extra attentive not to remove completely 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to erase on the server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how fantastic cPanel's domain name folder setup 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)
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)
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 becoming bewildered? We undeniably are!
Negative Sign Number Two: The same electronic mail folder setup
The mail folder structure on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Making the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly reinforce their faith in God when dealing with the e-mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to muck things up too irretrievably.
Negative Aspect No.3: A complete deficiency of domain name administration tools
Do we need to refer to the sheer absence of a contemporary domain name manipulation GUI - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domains' Whois information, protect the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a considerable downside. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...
Shortcoming Number 4: Multiple login places (minimum two, max 3)
How about the need for an extra login to avail of the billing, domain name and technical support administration interface? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based Hosting firm. Now and then, depending on the invoicing transaction system (principally designed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting supplier is utilizing, the avid clients can wind up with two extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain name administration platform; 2: the ticket support software), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (counting cPanel).
Negative Aspect No.5: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting Control Panel sections to get acquainted with... fast
cPanel presents to your attention more than 120 sections inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a superb idea to get to know each and every one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them rapidly... That's very insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one as well...
| Economy | Regular | Deluxe | Ultimate |
| 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 |
| $6.08 / month | $8.50 / month | $17.00 / month | $21.25 / month |