cPanel Website Hosting Unmasked
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based Website Hosting offerings on the current web hosting marketplace are provided by a very unsubstantial marketing niche (as far as yearly money flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller website hosting is a type of a small-scale business segment, which furnishes a big quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet furnishing literally the same thing: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the website hosting offerings on the entire website hosting market supply the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel Website Hosting prices are similar. Quite identical. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/website hosting Control Panel alternative. Thus, there is only one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand web hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2%! Less than 2 percent, mind that one...
Two hundred thousand "Website Hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled
The Website Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us boil down to just one thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different hosting brand names. Assume you are only a regular bloke who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website development procedures and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the respective domains and web pages. Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any website hosting alternative you can opt for? Of course there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting firms in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200k+ different website hosting brands all over the world will offer you the same cPanel website hosting CP and platform, branded in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the diversity on the present website hosting market is... Full stop.
The Website Hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple math reveals that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a huge stroke of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel Website Hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and presumably covered most website hosting business requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Inconvenience Number 1: A foolish domain folder system
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be extra watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to erase on the web hosting server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated 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 amazing 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 name)
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 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 growing baffled? We clearly are!
Disadvantage Number Two: The same e-mail folder system
The email folder arrangement on the web hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Making the very same error twice?!? The admin chums firmly fortify their faith in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to muck things up too badly.
Problem No.3: A thorough absence of domain manipulation sections
Do we need to refer to the complete deficiency of a modern domain management GUI - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domains, alter domains' Whois info, secure the Whois info, change/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" menu at all. That's a huge problem. An unpardonable one, we wish to point out...
Shortcoming Number 4: Multiple user login locations (min 2, maximum three)
What about the demand for an additional login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support administration GUI? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel Website Hosting service provider. At times, depending on the invoicing tool (particularly intended for cPanel only) the cPanel Website Hosting service provider is availing of, the ardent customers can wind up with two extra login locations (1: the invoicing transaction/domain name administration tool; 2: the trouble ticket support software platform), ending up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Disadvantage Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty web hosting CP departments to get to know... quickly
cPanel offers to your attention more than 120 menus inside the website hosting Control Panel. It's a wonderful idea to get acquainted with each and every one of them. And you'd better memorize them rapidly... That's extremely impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due respect, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based Website Hosting suppliers:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...
| Basic | Delux | Ultra | Entry |
| 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 |
| $3.75 / month | $8.33 / month | $12.00 / month | $2.75 / month |