SitePad is Softaculous's drag-and-drop website builder. It installs as a cPanel plugin, publishes static sites straight into a customer's document root, and gives you 600+ themes to put in front of users who will never open WordPress. It is licensed per server, separately from Softaculous Premium.

This covers the install, the plan limits that actually matter on shared hosting, the rebranding flags, and the licensing maths — including the honest question of whether you need SitePad at all now that Sitejet ships free with cPanel.

Do you still need it alongside Sitejet

cPanel 116+ bundles Sitejet Builder at no extra per-account cost, which kills the obvious pitch for a paid builder. The differences that survive:

	SitePad	Sitejet Builder
Cost to you	$5/month per server (list)	Included with cPanel
Panel support	cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, InterWorx, CWP, Webuzo	cPanel only
Rebranding	Full — name, logo, URL	None
Per-plan limits	Sites, pages, blog posts, themes	Feature list on/off only
End-user upsell	Yours to price, or SitePad's tiers	Sitejet bills the customer directly
Output	Static HTML published to the docroot	Static HTML published to the docroot

Two reasons to pay: you run a mixed fleet and want one builder everywhere, or you want the builder to carry your brand rather than someone else's. If you are cPanel-only and happy with an unbranded builder, Sitejet already does the job — do not buy twice.

Prerequisites

ionCube Loaders must be enabled for the backend PHP that cPanel uses, or the installer fails partway through with a loader error. Check before you start:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/php -m | grep -i ioncube

SitePad also needs outbound HTTPS to *.sitepad.com and *.softaculous.com, plus direct access to whichever publishing server you use:

us.sitepad.com — 95.216.104.254
eu.sitepad.com — 37.27.68.86

If you run CSF with a restrictive TCP_OUT, port 443 outbound is all that is required — SitePad does not use an odd port the way cPanel's own licensing does.

Install it

Three commands, roughly three minutes on a 2-vCPU VPS:

wget -O install.sh https://files.sitepad.com/install.sh
chmod 755 install.sh
./install.sh

Pin the editor server at install time if your customers are in Europe — publishing latency is the one thing users notice:

./install.sh --editor_url=https://eu.sitepad.com

Rebrand in the same pass. The brand name must be alphanumeric and the logo a 100×100 PNG served over HTTPS:

./install.sh --brand_name=Acmehost --brand_logo=https://acmehost.com/img/sitepad-logo.png --brand_url=https://acmehost.com

On servers where you manage PHP yourself and do not want SitePad touching cPanel's bundled third-party PHP, add --nocpphp.

When it finishes, the plugin lands at WHM » Plugins » SitePad Website Builder. Every new install gets a one-month trial license automatically, so you can validate the workflow before paying for anything.

Set plans before you expose it

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that stops a shared server filling up with 50-page brochure sites. In the SitePad admin panel go to Plans » Add Plans and set:

Sites — maximum SitePad sites per account
Pages — maximum pages per site
Blog Posts — maximum posts per site

Then map the plan to cPanel packages, reseller accounts, or individual users, and restrict which themes that plan can pick from. Plan mapping is cPanel-only — on Plesk or DirectAdmin you get the builder but not the ACL layer.

A sane shared-hosting starting point: 1 site, 10 pages, unlimited posts on entry plans; 3 sites and 25 pages on business plans. Bump it when someone asks, which is rarely.

Where users find it

Two entry points, both automatic. The cPanel sidebar gets a SitePad icon under the software section, and if you run Softaculous the end-user panel shows a SitePad link in the left column. Users can also install, clone, and delete SitePad sites from inside Softaculous exactly like any other script, which is the smoother path if your customers are already trained on one-click installs.

Licensing and what it costs

SitePad is a leased server license, one per server, at $5/month or $55/year list — the yearly is roughly an 8% discount, and monthly licenses carry a 15-day refund window against one month for yearly. It is not included with Softaculous Premium, which we sell at $1.50/month for VPS and $2.50/month for dedicated. Budget them as separate line items.

The end-user tiers are the upsell side: Free (15 themes, 1 site, 3 pages), Personal at $12/year, Professional at $24/year for 3 sites, and Business at $36/year for 10 sites. If you set your own plan limits in the admin panel as described above, you control that ladder and can price it into your hosting packages instead of sending customers to a third-party checkout — which is the main commercial argument for SitePad over Sitejet.

SitePad is not on our public price list. If you want it bundled with your Softaculous renewal on one invoice, ask us — we quote it per server alongside Softaculous Premium.

Refreshing the license after an IP change

The license is pinned to the server's public IPv4, same as every other Softaculous SKU. Update the IP on the license record first, then force a refresh instead of waiting for the cron:

/usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/bin/php /usr/local/sitepad/cli.php --refresh-license

Moving to a new box means copying the site metadata too, or every account loses its editor binding. Copy /home/USERNAME/.sitepad for every user — it holds the API key and password that identify the site on the editor server — plus /usr/local/sitepad/universal.php, and /usr/local/sitepad/conf if you use ACL-based plans. The same IP-pinning rules apply as when you move a Softaculous license.

Removing it cleanly

Uninstalling is a plugin deregistration plus file removal, in that order:

/usr/local/cpanel/bin/unregister_cpanelplugin /usr/local/sitepad/lib/panels/cpanel/sitepad.cpanelplugin
/usr/local/cpanel/scripts/uninstall_plugin /usr/local/sitepad/lib/panels/cpanel/sitepad.tar.gz
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/unregister_appconfig /usr/local/sitepad/lib/panels/cpanel/sitepad_whostmgr.conf
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/unregister_appconfig /usr/local/sitepad/lib/panels/cpanel/sitepad_cpanel.conf
rm -rf /etc/cron.d/sitepad /etc/cron.d/sitepad2
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/*/dynamicui/dynamicui_sitepad*.conf
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/cgi/sitepad /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/cgi/addon_sitepad.*
rm -rf /usr/local/sitepad

Published sites survive — they are static files under each account's docroot and are not touched by the uninstall. Only the editor goes away.

FAQ

Does SitePad require Softaculous?+

No. SitePad installs and licenses independently and works without Softaculous on the server. If Softaculous is present, SitePad appears in the end-user panel and can be installed, cloned, and removed like any other script.

How much does a SitePad license cost per server?+

List pricing is $5/month or $55/year for one server license, including updates and support. That is separate from Softaculous Premium at $1.50/month (VPS) or $2.50/month (dedicated) — the two do not bundle.

What happens to customer sites if the SitePad license expires?+

Nothing breaks publicly. SitePad publishes static HTML into the document root, so live sites keep serving normally. Customers just cannot open the editor to make changes until the license is renewed.

Can I rebrand SitePad with my own hosting brand?+

Yes — pass --brand_name, --brand_logo, and --brand_url to the installer. The brand name must be alphanumeric and the logo a 100x100 PNG over HTTPS. Changing it later means re-running the installer.

Is SitePad better than the free Sitejet Builder in cPanel?+

Only if you need rebranding, per-plan site and page limits, or the same builder across cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin. On a cPanel-only fleet with no branding requirement, Sitejet already covers the use case at no extra cost.

Do I need to open extra firewall ports for SitePad?+

No. Outbound TCP 443 to *.sitepad.com and *.softaculous.com is enough, plus reachability to the publishing server you selected (us.sitepad.com or eu.sitepad.com).

Next steps

Softaculous licenses explained: VPS vs dedicated pricing — the SKU SitePad sits next to on your invoice.
Enable and control Sitejet Builder in cPanel and WHM — the free alternative, and how to hide it on plans where it is noise.
Softaculous WordPress staging — what to offer the customers who outgrow a static builder.

Install SitePad on cPanel: setup, plans, and licensing