Most things you used to do in cPanel are now native pages in our portal — files, email, databases, subdomains, cron, all of them. But cPanel is still there for the things we haven't built portal-native versions of yet, or for advanced configurations.
How to open cPanel
- Go to Services and click your hosting service.
- Click the cPanel one-click login.
We sign you in automatically — no separate cPanel password to remember. You land in cPanel's home view with all the tools available.
When you'd actually use cPanel
For most day-to-day tasks, the portal handles it natively (and better). cPanel is the right place for:
- SSL/TLS Status tool — managing certificates manually (we auto-issue Let's Encrypt for you, but cPanel is where you'd upload a custom commercial cert).
- Web statistics — Awstats and Awstats for traffic analysis.
- Image manager — bulk image operations.
- Specialty tools — index manager, MIME types, Apache handlers, custom error pages.
- Anything that's only in cPanel — there's a long tail of advanced features we haven't replicated yet.
For everything else (files, email, DNS, databases, cron, redirects, FTP, subdomains, addon domains, password-protected directories), the portal-native page is faster and matches the rest of the portal's design.
Why we don't make you use cPanel
cPanel was built when the only way to manage hosting was through the host's UI. It's powerful but dated, with crowded screens and inconsistent UX. We rebuilt the common tasks portal-native because:
- Faster workflows (fewer clicks, better defaults).
- Consistent design with the rest of your account.
- Mobile-friendly — cPanel barely works on a phone.
- We can integrate cross-cutting features (the WordPress install wizard talks to our domain DNS and SSL automatically).
Cpanel password
You don't have a separate cPanel password by default — the portal SSO handles authentication. If you need an explicit cPanel password (for FTP at the cPanel-username level, or for some legacy integrations):
- Open the cPanel one-click login from your service.
- In cPanel, find Change Password in the Preferences section.
- Set one.
You'll typically only need this if you're using a tool that explicitly requires a cPanel username + password rather than SSO.
Logging out of cPanel
cPanel sessions expire after a period of inactivity. If you close the cPanel tab, the session ends. Re-opening cPanel from the portal generates a fresh SSO session.
Power-user note
The cPanel SSO link uses cPanel's create_user_session endpoint. We pass goto_uri= for deep-links to specific cPanel apps (phpMyAdmin, WP Toolkit, etc.) — that's how the "Open phpMyAdmin" tile in the portal works without you typing credentials.