Definition of cPanel Hosting
For your info, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based Hosting offers on the contemporary web hosting marketplace are provided by a very insignificant marketing niche (when it comes to yearly cash flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a kind of a small-scale marketing segment, which generates a huge amount of different web hosting brands, yet furnishing one and the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offers on the entire web hosting market supply exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel Hosting price tags are similar. Very similar. Giving those in need of a top web hosting service almost no other website hosting platform/web hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is only one fact: out of more than 200k web hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
Two hundred thousand "Hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet differently labeled
The Hosting "diversity" and the web hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are just a normal fellow who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the website making processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the separate domain names and online portals. Are you prepared to make your hosting selection? Is there any web hosting option you can opt for? Of course there is, at the moment there are more than 200,000 web hosting suppliers in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different website hosting brands across the world will give you strictly the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, named differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the variety on today's website hosting marketplace is... Period.
The Hosting LOTTO we are all participating in
Simple arithmetic reveals that to encounter a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a big strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a thing like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably satisfied all hosting business demands. To put it briefly, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Disadvantage No.1: A foolish domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domain names, though, be extremely careful not to erase entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to remove on the web server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Check for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder arrangement 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 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 name)
Are you growing bewildered? We certainly are!
Downside Number Two: The same email folder configuration
The mail folder structure on the web hosting server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The admin chums strongly strengthen their faith in God when dealing with the email folders on the e-mail server, hoping not to screw things up too harshly.
Weak Point Number 3: A sheer absence of domain name manipulation sections
Do we need to mention the complete absence of a contemporary domain manipulation menu - a place where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domain names' Whois details, secure the Whois information, edit/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's an immense downside. An unforgivable one, we want to add...
Downside No.4: Many login locations (minimum two, max 3)
How about the necessity for an additional login to access the invoicing, domain and tech support management GUI? That's beside the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel Hosting distributor. Sometimes, on the basis of the billing platform (particularly devised for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel Hosting provider is availing of, the keen customers can wind up with 2 extra login places (1: the invoice transaction/domain name management GUI; 2: the trouble ticket support software platform), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Drawback Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty hosting Control Panel departments to memorize... briskly
cPanel offers to your attention more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the web hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to get acquainted with each one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them briskly... That's quite impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting service providers:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...
| Business | Home | Corporate | Enterprise |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 5 websites hosted | 1 website hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| $8.58 / month | $6.00 / month | $17.08 / month | $21.25 / month |