cPanel Hosting

What is cPanel hosting and why is it so widespread?

cPanel hosting is a service in which you manage your hosting account on a Linux server with cPanel, a web-based control panel. cPanel brings domains, email, databases, files, SSL, backups and scheduled tasks together on one screen and requires no command-line knowledge.

There are several reasons cPanel is so widespread:

• Portability: moving a cPanel account to another cPanel server is a standard operation thanks to the panel’s own backup format.
• Plenty of documentation: there is a ready guide for almost every problem you might face, and menu names are the same at every provider.
• Ecosystem: tools such as Softaculous, LiteSpeed and WHM are designed to work with cPanel.
• Easy to learn: the icon-based interface lets non-technical users handle day-to-day tasks too.

What is included in a cPanel hosting plan?

Every cPanel hosting plan includes NVMe storage, free SSL, daily backups and email on your domain; plans differ in traffic, number of mailboxes, caching, backup frequency and support priority.

For rows marked “depends on plan”, the feature list on the plan card is authoritative. Values such as disk space, traffic quota and number of mailboxes are shown in the plan table on this page.

How do you choose between cPanel Starter, Pro and Business?

When choosing a cPanel hosting plan, answer three questions: how much traffic will your site get, how many mailboxes do you need and how much data loss can you tolerate? These three answers usually point to the right plan on their own.

• cPanel Starter: a brochure site with predictable traffic, a personal blog or a new project. Because there is a monthly traffic quota, it makes sense to host large video and download files elsewhere.
• cPanel Pro: a business site or WordPress blog with regular visitors. Unmetered traffic and LiteSpeed caching serve pages faster, and you can open more mailboxes for the team.
• cPanel Business: shops and portals whose order or form data changes every hour. Hourly backups reduce the restore point after possible data loss from a day to an hour; unlimited email and priority support are also on this plan.

You can monitor your resource usage on cPanel’s Resource Usage and Disk Usage screens and upgrade your plan as you approach the limits.

Which cPanel menu does what?

LIONFIN cPanel hosting accounts open with cPanel’s Jupiter theme; menu names are in English and sit in the same place at every cPanel provider. The most common tasks and their menus are:

If you cannot find a menu, just type part of its name into the search box at the top of the cPanel home page.

How do you install applications with Softaculous?

Softaculous is an auto-installer integrated with cPanel that installs hundreds of open-source applications such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, OpenCart and phpBB in a few clicks. It uploads the files, creates the database and edits the configuration file for you.

1. Choose the application in the Softaculous Apps Installer section of cPanel.
2. On the Install screen, choose the domain and the directory to install into; leave the directory field empty to install on the main domain.
3. Set an admin username and a strong password; avoid guessable names such as admin.
4. Tick the automatic update and automatic backup options as needed.
5. Start the installation; when it finishes, the admin panel address is shown on screen.

Softaculous is useful after installation too: you see installed applications in one list, apply updates from there, and can create a clone or staging copy of an installation. For shop-specific needs, see OpenCart hosting and PrestaShop hosting.

How does AutoSSL work, and why might a certificate not be issued?

AutoSSL is the cPanel feature that automatically issues a free domain-validated (DV) SSL certificate for every domain and subdomain on your account and renews it before it expires. You do not need to do anything to get the certificate; it is enough for the domain to point correctly to the server.

Before issuing a certificate, AutoSSL verifies that the domain really points to this server. The most common reasons a certificate is not issued are:

• DNS has not propagated yet: wait a few hours after a nameserver change.
• The domain points to another IP: the A record is still on the old server; check it in Zone Editor.
• The validation file cannot be reached: a redirect or access rule in .htaccess is blocking the validation request.
• The subdomain is not defined in DNS: records for subdomains such as www or mail are missing.

You can see certificate status on the SSL/TLS Status screen and retry with Run AutoSSL once the issue is fixed. If the browser shows a “not secure” warning after switching to HTTPS, the page has resources loaded over HTTP (mixed content); update those URLs to HTTPS.

How do you manage several domains in cPanel?

In cPanel, additional domains and subdomains are added from the Domains screen; each domain points to its own document root (folder) and runs as a completely separate site. The “Addon Domains” and “Subdomains” menus of older cPanel versions are combined into this single screen in the Jupiter theme.

• Addon domain: a completely separate domain for a different brand or project (for example secondbrand.com). It is added within the plan limits.
• Subdomain: part of your existing domain (for example blog.yourdomain.com, test.yourdomain.com); ideal for staging environments.
• Alias: to open the same site under a different domain as well, for example linking a country-code extension and .com to the same site.

Every addon domain shares the same account’s disk, CPU and email quota. Keeping document roots in separate folders in the home directory, rather than nesting them inside public_html, avoids confusion during backups and migrations. If you want to manage several clients’ sites with separate panels, reseller hosting is a better structure than gathering them on one account.

How is email managed in cPanel?

In cPanel, email accounts are created on the Email Accounts screen, and settings such as forwarding, auto-replies and spam filtering are handled in the Forwarders, Autoresponders and Spam Filters menus. You can connect to accounts through webmail in the browser or with email clients.

Standard ports for client setup:

The server name and account settings are shown ready-made under the Connect Devices link next to the account on the Email Accounts screen. To keep your messages out of spam folders, check on the Email Deliverability screen that your SPF and DKIM records show as valid. As your team grows, moving to a business email service for large quotas and archiving separates your site and your email.

How do you back up and restore in cPanel?

cPanel hosting plans back up your account automatically: daily on the Starter and Pro plans, hourly on the Business plan. On top of that, you can create your own backup at any moment with Backup Wizard and download it to your computer.

There are two kinds of user backups in cPanel, and it is important to know the difference:

• Full backup: gathers the whole account into one archive; it is for moving to another server or archiving. Restoring a full backup requires server administrator rights, so it is done through a support ticket.
• Partial backup: the home directory, a single MySQL database or email forwarders and filters are downloaded separately, and you can restore them yourself through Backup Wizard.

In practice the most common need is to return a single database or folder to an earlier point; so taking a partial backup of the relevant database before a critical operation makes rolling back as fast as possible. Keeping a copy in your own environment in addition to the provider backup is in line with the 3-2-1 backup rule.

How do you improve performance on cPanel hosting?

The three settings that most affect performance on cPanel hosting are a current PHP version, page caching and cutting unnecessary file load. NVMe storage and the network infrastructure provide the base; these settings decide how efficiently that base is used.

1. Update PHP: choose the newest version your site supports on the MultiPHP Manager screen; try the change on a copy under a subdomain first.
2. Turn on caching: to benefit from LiteSpeed caching on the Pro plan, activate the LiteSpeed Cache plugin in WordPress.
3. Adjust PHP limits: use MultiPHP INI Editor to set memory_limit and max_execution_time to your application’s needs within the plan limits.
4. Check the file count: old backups, cache folders and log files inflate the inode count; find and clean up large folders on the Disk Usage screen.
5. Watch the resource graphs: if you often hit the CPU and memory limits on the Resource Usage screen, either the code is the problem or the plan is too small.

How do you keep a cPanel account secure?

The foundation of keeping a cPanel account secure is a strong, unique password, two-factor authentication and up-to-date applications. Server and network security are handled by LIONFIN: the RouteFence firewall performs network-level DDoS filtering, and servers are monitored by a 24/7 SOC.

• Two-factor authentication: enable it with an authenticator app on cPanel’s Two-Factor Authentication screen.
• Separate passwords: give cPanel, FTP, email and database users different passwords, so a compromised account does not open the others.
• Narrow access: password-protect admin directories with Directory Privacy and block malicious IP addresses with IP Blocker.
• Keep applications up to date: use Softaculous’s automatic update option or check for updates regularly.
• Delete what you do not use: test installs, old FTP accounts and unused database users enlarge the attack surface.

cPanel or Plesk, and what comes after cPanel hosting?

cPanel is the most widespread and most easily portable panel for Linux hosting; Plesk stands out with Linux and Windows support, WordPress Toolkit and built-in Git. If you manage PHP sites only and are used to cPanel, choose cPanel; if you need Windows/ASP.NET or want to manage many WordPress sites in bulk, Plesk hosting is a better fit.

After cPanel hosting, the growth path splits three ways depending on your needs:

• Selling cPanel accounts to your customers: reseller hosting, where you open separate cPanel accounts with WHM.
• A managed environment without neighbour effects: business hosting with a dedicated resource share.
• Your own cPanel server: installing cPanel on a VPS and managing the whole server. In that case a cPanel licence is needed separately; licences are offered on the control panel licenses page.