What is cPanel Hosting?
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the contemporary website hosting marketplace are provided by a very insignificant business niche (as far as annual money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller hosting is a kind of a small-size business segment, which provides an immense number of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing one and the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace offer exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other web hosting platform/web hosting CP option. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brand names in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, note that one...
200,000 "Hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly labeled
The Hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offerings" Google presents to all of us come down to merely one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Imagine you are merely a regular 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 individual domain names and web pages. Are you prepared to make your web hosting decision? Is there any website hosting alternative you can settle on? Sure there is, right now there are more than 200,000 web hosting vendors out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brands worldwide will give you the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the diversity on today's website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic reveals that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a big stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The strong and weak sides of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps fulfilled most website hosting industry prerequisites. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Predicament Number One: A stupid domain folder structure
If you have two or more domains, however, be extremely cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very easy to remove on the web hosting server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located 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. Discover for yourself how great cPanel's domain name 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)
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 growing perplexed? We surely are!
Negative Sign No.2: The very same mail folder configuration
The mail folder arrangement on the web hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The admin chaps firmly strengthen their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, hoping not to botch things up too badly.
Negative Point Number 3: A sheer shortage of domain administration options
Do we have to mention the thorough lack of a modern domain manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois info, shield the Whois information, change/create name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "contemporary" section at all. That's a gigantic predicament. An unforgivable one, we want to add...
Weak Point Number 4: Multiple login places (min 2, maximum 3)
What about the need for another login to utilize the invoicing, domain name and technical support management software platform? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel Hosting service provider. Now and then, based on the invoicing transaction platform (especially built for cPanel only) the cPanel Hosting service provider is utilizing, the enthusiastic clients can wind up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoicing/domain name management software; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), ending up with an aggregate of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Disadvantage Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty website hosting Control Panel areas to memorize... briskly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the hosting CP. It's a superb idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better memorize them promptly... That's way too arrogant on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...
| Business | Corporate | School District |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $8.75 / month | $21.25 / month | $17.00 / month |