cPanel Hosting Unmasked
For your info, it's useful to know that the majority of the cPanel Hosting offerings on the contemporary website hosting marketplace are provided by a very inconsiderable marketing niche (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller website hosting is a sort of a small marketing niche, which generates a huge number of different web hosting trademarks, yet providing literally the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98 percent of the web hosting offerings on the whole web hosting market supply precisely the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based Hosting price tags are identical. Very similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/hosting Control Panel choice. So, there is only a single fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200k "Hosting service providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The Hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us boil down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different website hosting brand names. Assume you are simply an average fellow who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the site making procedures and the website hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domains and web portals. Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting variant you can select? Of course there is, today there are more than 200,000 website hosting suppliers out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these 200k+ unique hosting brands in the world will give you exactly the same cPanel hosting CP and platform, labeled differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how huge the variety on the current hosting market is... Full stop.
The Hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to select a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an enormous strike of luck. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative points of the cPanel-based Hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and perhaps met all web hosting market demands. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Shortcoming No.1: A foolish domain folder setup
If you have two or more domain names, though, be ultra cautious not to erase completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each next hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are quite simple 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 name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to erase the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain name folder configuration 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 name)
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 becoming perplexed? We surely are!
Negative Sign Number 2: The very same e-mail folder structure
The mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Making the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums firmly fortify their faith in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the email server, hoping not to mess things up too irreparably.
Weakness Number 3: A sheer lack of domain manipulation user interfaces
Do we have to point out the complete lack of a modern domain name management platform - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domain names, modify domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois information, modify/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not involve such a "contemporary" tool at all. That's a mammoth weakness. An unforgettable one, we wish to point out...
Shortcoming Number 4: Numerous user login locations (minimum two, maximum 3)
What about the necessity for an additional login to avail of the billing transaction, domain and technical support administration software? That's apart from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel Hosting corporation. Now and then, depending on the invoice transaction system (particularly tailored for cPanel solely) the cPanel Hosting corporation is availing of, the ardent clients can wind up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain name management tool; 2: the trouble ticket support section), winding up with a total of three user login locations (counting cPanel).
Inconvenience Number 5: More than 120 Control Panel sections to pick up... promptly
cPanel offers for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty areas inside the web hosting Control Panel. It's a great idea to memorize each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them quickly... That's excessively impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel Hosting companies:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...
| Starter | Business | Corporate | Enterprise | VIP Hosting |
| Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage | Unlimited storage |
| Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth | Unlimited bandwidth |
| 1 website hosted | 5 websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | Unlimited websites hosted | 5 websites hosted |
| 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial | 30-Day Free Trial |
| C$6.05 / month | C$8.64 / month | C$25.89 / month | C$30.93 / month | C$19.98 / month |