Hosting Control Panels: Part 5 — cPanel

cPanel — the most widespread commercial hosting control panel in the world. Most of the shared virtual hosting abroad runs on it, and many guides on the internet are written assuming its interface. cPanel is developed and sold by the American company WebPros, which also owns Plesk.

Main point for users in Russia: on March 31, 2026 WebPros stopped servicing customers from Russia and Belarus. Subscriptions for cPanel and Plesk were terminated that day; it is not possible to officially purchase or renew a license from Russia. Therefore this part of the series is a reference on how cPanel works and how to migrate from it to panels available in Russia.

How cPanel is structured

The product consists of two interfaces:

• WHM (WebHost Manager) — the server administrator interface. Hosting accounts are created here, plans and limits are set, services, updates and server security are managed.
• cPanel — the account owner interface. Here a hosting client manages their websites, mail, databases, files and backups.

This separation is what made cPanel the standard for mass hosting: the provider manages the server in WHM, while hundreds of clients each work in their own cPanel and do not see each other.

Features

• Sites and domains. Primary and addon domains, subdomains, redirects; Apache web server, with the option to put Nginx in front of it.
• PHP. Multiple PHP versions with per-site selection.
• Databases. MySQL/MariaDB and PostgreSQL, phpMyAdmin.
• Mail. Mailboxes, forwarders, autoresponders, spam filters; webmail — Roundcube.
• WordPress. Since version 100 (November 2021) cPanel includes the full WordPress Toolkit: installation, updates, cloning and backups of WordPress sites. Many providers additionally install the Softaculous auto-installer.
• SSL. Automatic issuance of free certificates (AutoSSL).
• Backups. Full account backups that can be restored on another cPanel server or imported into other panels.
• Security. Protection from password guessing cPHulk, ModSecurity, two-factor authentication.

What is outdated in older descriptions. SquirrelMail webmail was removed from cPanel in version 78, Horde — in version 108 (2022); now only Roundcube remains in the panel. The Fantastico auto-installer has long been displaced by WordPress Toolkit and Softaculous.

Supported systems and requirements

cPanel and WHM are installed on AlmaLinux, CloudLinux, Rocky Linux and Ubuntu (version 24.04 LTS). The claim in older reviews that cPanel runs only on RPM-based distributions is no longer true. Debian is not supported.

Minimum requirements for Ubuntu according to cPanel documentation — 2 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended) and 20 GB on disk (40 GB recommended), 64-bit only.

Licensing and pricing

Since 2019 cPanel has been licensed by the number of hosting accounts on the server, and prices have been rising almost every year. As of January 1, 2026:

For a single site on a personal VPS, cPanel costs more than the server itself — this is the main reason owners of small projects move to free panels.

How to migrate from cPanel

The procedure is the same for all panels:

1. Full account backup. In cPanel: “Files → Backup → Download a Full Account Backup”, or in WHM — “Backup” on a schedule. Download the archive to your machine; do not leave it only on the old server.
2. Inventory. Record PHP versions, cron jobs, mailboxes and forwarders, DNS records of the domain — all this can be easily lost during migration.
3. Transfer to the new panel:
   • ISPmanager can import a cPanel backup: “Administration → Import user”. Files, databases and DNS records are transferred. If you need to entrust the entire migration, ISPmanager offers migration performed by their engineers;
   • HestiaCP since version 1.7 imports a cPanel backup with the command v-import-cpanel /backup/backup.tar.gz. According to reports in the project’s tracker, certificates and DKIM keys are not transferred during import — they are reissued;
   • FASTPANEL has no cPanel backup import: files, database dumps and mail are transferred manually.
4. Certificates. Let’s Encrypt certificates are not transferred — they are reissued on the new server.
5. Verify and switch DNS. Check the site via the hosts file, then change the A and MX records. Pre-reducing the TTL will shorten the switchover time.

A step-by-step manual site migration is described in the article /ru/devops/031/.

Who cPanel is suitable for now

Outside Russia, cPanel remains the standard for hosting providers and studios that serve dozens of clients: the WHM/cPanel separation, mature ecosystem and backup compatibility with other panels justify the license cost. For a Russian server, choosing cPanel today is not advisable: a license cannot be paid for officially, and a subscription may be terminated without the possibility of renewal.