How Does cPanel Hosting Work?
For your information, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel Hosting offers on the contemporary hosting marketplace are provided by a very insignificant business niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-scale business niche, which furnishes a big amount of different web hosting brand names, yet offering strictly the same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting marketplace furnish strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service almost no other hosting platform/hosting Control Panel option. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting brands worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than two percent, mind that one...
200,000 "Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The Hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the same solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different website hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are merely an ordinary fellow who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the website development processes and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and web pages. Are you prepared to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web hosting option you can opt for? Of course there is, now there are more than two hundred thousand hosting firms out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different web hosting brands across the world will give you strictly the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with precisely the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the diversity on the present-day web hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a colossal stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be harsh with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably fulfilled most website hosting business requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Disadvantage Number 1: A dumb domain folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra cautious not to erase entirely 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 name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the hosting server, because they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very 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 attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. See for yourself how great cPanel's domain 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 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)
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 getting baffled? We surely are!
Drawback Number Two: The very same email folder arrangement
The mail folder configuration on the web server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The admin chums firmly strengthen their belief in God when handling the mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to bungle things up too irretrievably.
Weakness Number 3: A thorough lack of domain name management interfaces
Do we need to mention the sheer absence of a modern domain name administration GUI - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domains, modify domain names' Whois details, secure the Whois details, alter/create name servers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "modern" interface at all. That's an immense problem. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...
Weak Point No.4: Multiple user login locations (min 2, max 3)
How about the need for an additional login to access the billing transaction, domain and technical support administration interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based Hosting supplier. Now and then, depending on the invoicing transaction platform (especially conceived for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting vendor is using, the keen clients can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain name management user interface; 2: the ticket support section), winding up with a total of three user login locations (counting cPanel).
Downside No.5: More than 120 web hosting CP sections to get familiar with... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a marvelous idea to become acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better become familiar with them swiftly... That's quite insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting providers:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...
| Primary | Corporate | Enterprise |
| 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 |
| $8.50 / month | $10.25 / month | $14.07 / month |