What Exactly is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the present web hosting market are generated by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) known as hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-size marketing segment, which furnishes a big quantity of different web hosting trademarks, yet supplying strictly the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace offer one and the same solution: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/hosting CP option. Thus, there is merely one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...
200,000 "Hosting companies", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The Hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting trademarked names. Suppose you are simply an ordinary bloke who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the website development procedures and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the different domains and web sites. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200,000 hosting suppliers out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand different website hosting brands in the world will offer you strictly the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, branded differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the contemporary website hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a great stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will take place! Less than 1 in fifty...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably answered most website hosting industry requirements. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Disadvantage Number 1: A moronic domain folder structure
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra cautious not to delete entirely 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 very simple to remove on the web hosting server, because they all are situated into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous 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. Verify for yourself how wonderful cPanel's domain 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 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 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 baffled? We surely are!
Predicament Number 2: The same mail folder setup
The e-mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin boys strongly enhance their faith in God when handling the email folders on the e-mail server, praying not to screw things up too severely.
Problem No.3: An absolute deficiency of domain name administration GUIs
Do we have to cite the total absence of a contemporary domain name administration menu - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domain names, modify domains' Whois information, shield the Whois info, modify/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" tool at all. That's a gigantic shortcoming. An unjustifiable one, we would like to add...
Weak Point No.4: Multiple login places (minimum 2, maximum 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to use the invoice transaction, domain name and tech support administration menu? That's apart from the cPanel login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel Hosting vendor. Occasionally, depending on the billing system (especially meant for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting corporation is making use of, the eager customers can end up with two additional login locations (1: the billing/domain name administration interface; 2: the trouble ticket support GUI), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login places (counting cPanel).
Drawback Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty website hosting CP departments to get to know... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the website hosting CP. It's an excellent idea to learn each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them briskly... That's excessively impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...
| 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 |
| $3.00 / month | $3.92 / month | $8.67 / month | $12.50 / month |