What is a cPanel licence?
A cPanel licence is the official right to run cPanel & WHM on a server. The licence is registered to the server's public IP address, and the software verifies it with the licence server. While the licence is active you receive panel updates, security patches and new features.
One licence covers both panels: WHM (Web Host Manager), used by the server administrator, and the cPanel interface used by each hosting account.
What does cPanel do?
- Account management: Create a separate hosting account for each site or client in WHM and set disk and bandwidth quotas.
- Email: Business mailboxes on your domain, forwarders, autoresponders and spam filters.
- SSL: AutoSSL issues and renews free certificates for all your domains automatically.
- Databases and files: MySQL/MariaDB, phpMyAdmin, a file manager and FTP accounts.
- Developer tools: Multiple PHP versions, Git, cron jobs and SSH access.
Server requirements
cPanel runs only on Linux. Supported distributions include AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux, CloudLinux and selected Ubuntu LTS releases. cPanel must be installed on a clean, freshly installed server; installing it on a system that already runs another web server or panel is not recommended.
For comfortable use we recommend at least 2 GB of RAM and 40 GB of disk. If you will host many sites, a VDS server with 4 GB of RAM or more provides a more stable experience.
How is a cPanel licence priced?
cPanel prices its licences by the number of hosted accounts, so a small project and a reseller server hosting hundreds of clients pay different licence fees. The price on our page is for the standard licence offered in the server configurator; for setups that need more accounts, ask our sales team for a quote.
You can renew the licence monthly or yearly, with a discount on yearly billing.
Using cPanel with LiteSpeed
cPanel ships with the Apache web server by default. When you add a LiteSpeed Enterprise licence, LiteSpeed replaces Apache; your .htaccess rules keep working and LSCache makes WordPress sites noticeably faster. This is the combination hosting providers choose most often.
cPanel or Plesk?
If you will use Linux only and manage many hosting accounts, cPanel is a strong choice. If you need a Windows server, ASP.NET or MSSQL, a Plesk licence is a better fit. If you are unsure, our experts will recommend the right panel for your project.