How to install cPanel on your VPS

cPanel & WHM is the most widely deployed control panel for Linux hosting. This guide walks through every step needed to take a freshly provisioned VPS from empty to a logged-in WHM, ready to issue cPanel accounts to your customers.

The whole process takes about 30 minutes of clock time, most of which is the installer running unattended.

Before you start

You will need:

• A VPS or dedicated server with at least 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM (cPanel's published minimum is 1 GB, but anything below 4 GB will swap heavily under real load).
• One of the supported operating systems, freshly installed with no other software:
  • AlmaLinux 8 or 9
  • Rocky Linux 8 or 9
  • CloudLinux 7, 8, or 9
  • Ubuntu 20.04 or 22.04 LTS
• Root SSH access to the server (root user with a working SSH key or password).
• A valid cPanel license bound to the server's primary public IP. If you don't have one, you can activate a license here and the key will be issued in under 60 seconds.
• A fully-qualified hostname like server1.example.com resolving to the server's public IP. cPanel refuses to install on a hostname that doesn't resolve.

Step 1 — Set the hostname

cPanel uses the hostname for license validation, certificate provisioning, and outbound mail. SSH into the server as root and set it:

hostnamectl set-hostname server1.example.com
echo "203.0.113.10 server1.example.com server1" >> /etc/hosts

Verify it resolves both ways:

hostname -f          # should print server1.example.com
ping -c1 server1     # should resolve to your public IP

Step 2 — Update the system and reboot

A current kernel and current glibc will save you debugging time later.

# AlmaLinux / Rocky / CloudLinux
dnf update -y && reboot

# Ubuntu
apt update && apt full-upgrade -y && reboot

Wait for the server to come back up, then reconnect over SSH.

Step 3 — Run the cPanel installer

cPanel ships a single install script that handles everything: dependencies, services, MySQL, Exim, Dovecot, the WHM web interface, and the licensing client.

cd /home
curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest
sh latest

The installer will run for 15–25 minutes. It prints progress to the terminal and writes a detailed log to /var/log/cpanel-install.log. You can safely follow that log in another SSH session:

tail -f /var/log/cpanel-install.log

When it finishes you will see:

Thank you for installing cPanel & WHM 11.122!
You can now navigate to https://server1.example.com:2087 and log in as root.

Step 4 — Activate the license

Once the installer reports success, run the license update tool to bind the license to the server's IP:

/usr/local/cpanel/cpkeyclt

You should see Update succeeded. If you see License File Invalid, the license is not yet issued to this IP — check your Panellicense dashboard and confirm the IP matches.

Step 5 — First WHM login

In your browser, go to:

https://server1.example.com:2087

Log in as root with the server's root password. The first time you log in, WHM will walk you through:

1. Setup wizard — accept the agreement and set your contact email
2. Nameservers — point your domain's nameservers at this server (e.g. ns1.example.com, ns2.example.com)
3. Service offering — pick a default mail and DNS configuration (BIND is fine to start)
4. Resolvers — accept the defaults (Google + Cloudflare)

After the wizard, you land on the WHM home screen.

Step 6 — Post-install hardening

cPanel ships a sane default, but there are five things every operator should do before issuing customer accounts:

1. Tweak Settings

WHM Home → Server Configuration → Tweak Settings. The defaults that catch people out:

• Brute force protection (cPHulk): enable it under Security Center → cPHulk Brute Force Protection. Set the login interval to 5 minutes and lock duration to 30.
• SSH port: keep the default 22 for now — changing it requires updating the firewall and cPHulk simultaneously.

2. Install ConfigServer Firewall (CSF)

CSF replaces the default firewall with something easier to manage and adds a log-analysing intrusion-detection layer:

cd /usr/src
wget https://download.configserver.com/csf.tgz
tar -xzf csf.tgz
cd csf
sh install.sh

Then edit /etc/csf/csf.conf and set TESTING = "0" once you've confirmed you can still SSH in.

3. Configure cPanel & WHM updates

WHM Home → Server Configuration → Update Preferences. Set:

• cPanel & WHM Updates → Release tier (stable)
• Operating System Package Updates → Automatic
• Apache SpamAssassin Rules Updates → Automatic

4. Set the cPanel Nameserver IPs

If you plan to run authoritative DNS for your customers, set the nameserver IPs in WHM Home → Server Configuration → Basic WebHost Manager Setup.

5. Create your first reseller (don't use root)

WHM Home → Account Functions → Create a New Account then promote it to reseller via Resellers → Reseller Center. Use this reseller account for day-to-day operations and keep root for true administrator work only.

FAQ

Next steps

• Read Tuning CloudLinux LVE limits without angry customers if you're running cPanel on CloudLinux
• Set up LiteSpeed as a drop-in Apache replacement for a real performance lift
• If you're migrating from Plesk, the Plesk → cPanel migration playbook walks through the WHM transfer tool