Knowledgebase

What is WHM (Web Host Manager)?

Web Host Manager, or WHM, is a powerful program that allows administrative access to the back end of cPanel. Reseller accounts get basic WHM. Dedicated Servers and VPS accounts get root WHM (also called rWHM), which has features that require root access to the server enabled.

Advantages of WHM

WHM gives you a lot more control and flexibility when managing a few very popular and resource-intensive sites OR a large number of sites. WHM gives you the ability to sell hosting services to other people and the option to create and manage multiple cPanels. There are lots of really good reasons, if you have business-oriented or popular sites, to place them on separate cPanels. Some of the more common reasons are:

• If one of your sites is hacked or attacked, the odds that the hacker can get into your other sites is dramatically reduced, which increases your security.

• There is no way for someone to tell if accounts on different cPanels are attached to the same WHM account, which increases your privacy.

• If you have multiple sites that need to take credit cards, using WHM saves you a lot of time, stress, and money. To be able to process credit cards you need an SSL certificate. To have an SSL certificate you must have a dedicated IP address, and you can only have one dedicated IP address per cPanel. If you are running multiple websites that need to be able to take credit cards, a Reseller account is much easier (and either less expensive or equal in cost; the break-even point is two websites) for managing multiple cPanels than have to manage multiple accounts.

• You have the ability to monitor and adjust your bandwidth and disk space, which can be key to keeping a quickly growing or popular site from being suspended or going down due to bandwidth overages. Since you can adjust your bandwidth and only upgrade when you really need it, this can dramatically reduce your costs.

• Managing a large number of domains in one cPanel can be frustrating, especially if you update the files regularly. While we allow unlimited domains on a shared cPanel account, that does not mean it is always pleasant to work on that many domains in one cPanel.

Features of WHM

With WHM you can use a whole slew of tools that help you easily:

• Create, delete, and suspend your cPanel accounts

• Manage and monitor your sites (password resets)

• Access to check and change all of your domains' DNS zones

• The ability to configure your own customers' support requests through cPanel

• Permission to check the server information and status

• Ability to create your own default page when you create a new account

• Access to customize your hosting and control panel with extensive branding

• Ability to change your client domain names and user names

• Hop between every cPanel on your account and access/change anything that does not require SQL access