What Precisely is cPanel Hosting?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel Hosting offers on the current website hosting market are supplied by a quite insignificant business niche (when it comes to yearly money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small business segment, which supplies a big 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? Because at least 98% of the website hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market offer exactly the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are alike. Very similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is only one fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brands around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, remark that one...
200k "Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The Hosting "diversity" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us boil down to just one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Assume you are only an average fellow who's not very well acquainted with (as the majority of us) with the web site development processes and the website hosting platforms, which in fact power the individual domain names and web sites. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting variant you can select? Sure there is, at the moment there are more than 200k web hosting firms in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ unique web hosting brand names worldwide will offer you the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the diversity on the present hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic reveals that to stumble upon a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is an enormous stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will happen! Less than one in 50...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel Hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably answered all web hosting industry demands. 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 domain names...
Negative Sign Number One: A laughable domain name folder configuration
If you have two or more domains, however, be ultra attentive not to erase fully 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 domains are quite simple to delete on the server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed 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. See for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain name folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is placed)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 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)
Are you getting bewildered? We definitely are!
Negative Point Number Two: The very same electronic mail folder structure
The e-mail folder structure on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly fortify their faith in God when managing the electronic mail folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to muck things up too badly.
Inconvenience No.3: A thorough lack of domain administration options
Do we need to point out the sheer deficiency of a contemporary domain administration menu - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois info, secure the Whois details, change/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not involve such a "modern" section at all. That's a gigantic inconvenience. An unforgettable one, we would like to point out...
Weak Point No.4: Many user login places (minimum 2, maximum three)
What about the necessity for an additional login to use the billing transaction, domain and tech support management software? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based Hosting company. Now and then, based on the billing transaction tool (particularly conceived for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting corporation is availing of, the enthusiastic users can wind up with two additional logins (1: the billing transaction/domain name administration section; 2: the ticket support platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login locations (including cPanel).
Shortcoming Number Five: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel areas to learn... rapidly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than one hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better grasp them promptly... That's extremely insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting distributors:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...
| Pro | Pro Plus | Expert | Starter |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 1 website hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $4.17 / month | $8.33 / month | $12.00 / month | $2.92 / month |