How to Create/Terminate a cPanel Account in WHM

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As a VPS service provider, reseller host, or dedicated hosting plan owner, creating cPanel accounts in WHM is essential.

Using WHM allows you to efficiently manage and host individual cPanel accounts independently. Each cPanel user operates within their isolated environment, unaware of others sharing the server. This setup provides distinct “sandboxes” for managing websites and email securely and privately.

In this guide, we will show you how to create and terminate a cPanel account in WHM.

You can also set different limitations based on the purpose of the sites or the amount you are reselling them for. For example, you may be using a cPanel to host a basic “business card” website for a client that will not need many resources. So, you can set limits on bandwidth and disk usage for this user and charge them less than a more resource-intensive site.

1. How to create a cPanel Account in WHM

Step 1: Log in to WHM.

Step 2: Type “create” in the search box then click Create a New Account in the Account Functions section.

Step 3: Fill in the fields on the Domain information page. Below is a description of the options

  • Domain – The domain you want to have as the primary domain for the account.
  • Username – The username you want the account to have.
  • Password – The account’s password (You can use the password generation tool, as it also has an autofill option).
  • Email – The contact e-mail that you want to associate with this account.
  • Package – The package you want the account to have (usually the default one).

Step 4: Select the desired package from the dropdown menu or check the Select Options Manually box to choose custom resource options. See our full guide for more information on

Step 5: If you choose to select your options manually you can set limitations for disk space, bandwidth, and databases or make them unlimited.

Step 6: Select your default theme and locale then choose your SpamAssassin settings.

  • cPanel Theme – A dropdown that allows you to select a theme, typically this will be the paper_lantern cPanel theme.
  • Locale – Selecting this will set the language for your cPanel, applying for the rest of the third-party integrated services in cPanel – for instance AWstats.
  • Enable Apache SpamAssassin – Enable the Apache SpamAssassin. This is useful to have given the fact that it provides great spam-preventing features.
  • Enable Spam Box – If this is disabled, spam will be delivered directly into your mailbox, which is something you do not want so you should keep it enabled.

Step 7: Set the Mail Routing Settings.

  • Automatically Detect Configuration: cPanel looks to the MX records to determine whether to send mail locally or remotely.
  • Local Mail Exchanger: Use when mail is expected to always come to the local server.
  • Backup Mail Exchanger: cPanel will use the local server if remote mail attempts fail.
  • Remote Mail Exchanger: Use when mail is expected to be sent elsewhere (third-party email).

Step 8: Set your DNS Settings. For more information, see our article on SPF and DKIM settings

  • Enable DKIM on this account: DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) helps verify that an email was not modified and came from a valid sender.
  • Enable SPF on this account: SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records are used to identify the servers that are allowed to send mail to your domain. A recipient server can then check the SPF record when an email is received and confirm it was sent from a valid server.
  • Use the nameservers specified at the Domain’s Registrar: This will disregard any nameserver settings you may have in your cPanel and follow the registrar instead.
  • Overwrite any existing DNS zones for the account: Enable this to remove and replace any existing DNS zones with this latest record.

Step 9: Click on the Create button. The creation of the account will take a couple of seconds, after which you will be forwarded to a page, containing information about the created account.

There will also be a handy “Go to cPanel” button on the top right corner, which will directly log you in when you press it.

Congratulations, now you know how to create a cPanel account in WHM for your reseller Hosting, VPS, or Dedicated server!

2. How to Terminate a cPanel Account in WHM

Having the ability to remove a cPanel account from the WHM is invaluable. Sometimes, you are faced with situations where you have a lot of accounts that are unused or a very long list of accounts that you do not need anymore. This gets in your way and it makes it harder to manage your users. In this case, it’s better to remove them and the “Terminate” module is meant for exactly that purpose. Something you need to note is that this process is irreversible and if an account is terminated, there is no way you can recover it unless you have an available backup. In this guide, we will be discussing the “Terminate Account” feature and how you can utilize it in order to remove cPanel accounts from your VPS or Dedicated Server.

Step 1: Log in to WHM.

Step 2: WHM will then show a single result underneath the search bar. All you need to do is click on it so that you are redirected to the “Terminate Accounts” page.

Step 3: Upon landing on this page you will notice a search field and a section containing a list of accounts – more specifically their “Username”, “Domain”, “Owner” and “Account State”. You may use this search bar to filter the accounts based on the above conditions.

Right below the search bar, you will see a checkbox, which you may use to select only accounts that have the “Suspended” status. This is very useful since with this functionality, you can avoid making mistakes such as terminating an “Active” account by accident, which can cause all websites hosted on the terminated account to go down.

There are two ways you can terminate a cPanel account – either by ticking the checkbox on the left side of the section since this will activate the “Remove Selected Accounts” button above the search bar or simply pressing the “Remove” button on the far right side which is on the same row as the account you would like to remove.

The last option on this page we are going to talk about is the “Keep DNS Zone”. This will terminate the account itself but will leave the domain’s DNS zone file. This is very useful if you are moving the account to a different server, which is a part of the same DNS cluster as this one and you simply want to remove the account information.

Conclusion

Here is everything you need to know about creating and terminating a cPanel account using the WHM control panel. We aim to provide a thorough explanation so that you can effectively manage your account creation and termination processes.

Good Luck!