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Logging in to cPanel

Day-to-day work on a cPanel hosting account happens inside cPanel itself. You don't need a separate cPanel password to get there: the cPanel Accounts list in your CloudPress workspace has a Log in button that signs you straight into the control panel.

This page covers that single sign-on, the connection settings the dashboard publishes alongside it in Login details, and what to do when either doesn't behave.

Before you start

  • Your workspace needs cPanel hosting enabled — see cPanel hosting on CloudPress. Without it the sidebar item isn't there and cPanel URLs bounce you back to the dashboard with "cPanel hosting is not available for this workspace."
  • The workspace needs to be on a paid plan. On a trial, cPanel pages send you to the plan-upgrade screen with "Activate a paid plan to use cPanel hosting."
  • You need an account in the list already. If you haven't ordered one, start with Ordering cPanel hosting.
  • You need edit permission on the workspace that owns the account. A view-only member can see the account but gets no Log in button — see When there's no Log in button.

Open cPanel from the dashboard

  1. Go to the cPanel accounts list. Choose cPanel Accounts in the workspace sidebar. The page is headed cPanel accounts, with one row per account.

  2. Find the account. If you have several, the search box at the top of the card filters them — its placeholder is "Search username, domain, server…".

  3. Choose Log in. The blue Log in button sits at the end of the account's row. It opens in a new browser tab, so the dashboard tab you were on stays exactly where it was.

  4. You arrive already signed in. CloudPress asks the hosting server for a login session for that account's username and sends the new tab to the address it gets back. You are not asked for a cPanel password anywhere in this flow, and no password is sent — the server issues the session on the strength of CloudPress's own credentials for that machine.

Nothing to bookmark

Each click asks the hosting server for a fresh, single-use login address, and the dashboard checks that the address really does point back at the server holding your account before following it. Saving the URL you land on isn't useful — come back to Log in next time instead.

The button asks for no extra confirmation. Unlike changing the cPanel password, which requires a billing permission and a re-confirm identity step, Log in needs only edit permission on the workspace that owns the account — but it does need that. A control-panel session is full access to the hosting: files, databases, email and DNS. A view-only member of the workspace can see the account in the list, and the Log in button simply isn't shown on their rows.

Logging in over the API

POST /api/cpanel_accounts/{username}/session does the same thing for an integration: it returns a one-time login URL rather than redirecting, so your code decides what to do with it. Treat the URL as a credential — it is single-use and short-lived, and it shouldn't be logged or cached. It needs the same edit permission as the button, plus an API key or a signed-in session; an OAuth access token is refused whatever scopes it carries.

When there's no Log in button

Four things remove or replace the button. Three of them are states of the account, and each says why on the row itself:

What the row shows What it means
A Blocked badge and "Account suspended. Contact support to resolve." — in place of the buttons The account is suspended. The whole actions menu is gone, so neither logging in nor the other account actions are available until it's lifted.
A Pending deletion badge, with Restore and Purge now instead of Log in The account is scheduled for removal. Restore it first — see Deleting and recovering an account.
A Provisioning… badge and "Account is being set up on the server" The order has gone through but the server is still creating the account. The row has no actions yet; it gains them once provisioning finishes.

A row that is suspended with a reason recorded shows that reason inline instead of the generic message.

The fourth is about you rather than the account: without edit permission on the workspace that owns it, the button isn't rendered at all, on any row. The rest of the row reads normally, and the actions menu is still there. If your colleagues have a Log in button and you don't, ask whoever administers the workspace for edit access — see Inviting users and roles.

Login details: the settings for everything else

Not everything connects through the control panel. FTP clients, mail clients and DNS records need hostnames, ports and protocols, and the dashboard collects them in one place.

  1. Open the actions menu. On the account's row, choose the ⋮ button next to Log in.

  2. Choose Login details. A dialog headed Login details opens, with the account's main domain shown underneath the title and two tabs: Hosting and E-mail.

  3. Copy what you need. Most rows have a copy button beside the value.

The Hosting tab groups three sections:

  • Webserver — Hostname, plus IPv4 and IPv6 for the machine your account lives on. These are a convenience lookup; a blank one is cosmetic.
  • Control panel — the URL of cPanel on your own domain. Opening it gets you a normal cPanel login prompt rather than the one-click route above, so Log in on the account row is still the easier path.
  • FTP / SFTP — Host, Username, the Ports (2222 for SFTP, 21 for FTP) and the Directory your website files belong in, public_html. The Password row deliberately shows no value: it reads "Use your cPanel password", which is the one you set in Changing your cPanel password.

The E-mail tab groups five more:

  • Incoming mail (IMAP) — Server, protocol "IMAP with SSL", port 993.
  • Outgoing mail (SMTP) — Server, protocol "SMTP with SSL", port 465, and Auth "Yes (password)".
  • Webmail — a URL for reading mail in a browser.
  • Account — how to fill the username and password in a mail client. The username is your full email address; the password field is not printed here either, and points you at cPanel's own email-account screen to reset it.
  • SPF record — a ready-made Value to copy into your domain's DNS.

The dialog shows settings, never passwords

Every password field in Login details is a hint rather than a value. CloudPress doesn't display the account's cPanel password or any mailbox password back to you, so a lost cPanel password is reset rather than looked up — see Changing your cPanel password.

If logging in fails

When CloudPress can't obtain a session, the new tab lands back on the cPanel accounts list with "Could not create cPanel login session:" followed by the reason the hosting server gave. That happens when the server can't be reached, when CloudPress can't resolve credentials for it, or when the address it returned doesn't point back at the server holding your account — in which case the dashboard refuses to follow it rather than sending your browser somewhere unexpected.

There is nothing to fix from your side, and the message is recorded for support. Try once more in case it was a transient network problem, then contact us with the account's username and the message you saw.

Two other messages point elsewhere:

  • "cPanel account not found" — the username isn't one this workspace owns, or it has already been permanently removed. Check you're in the right workspace using the sidebar account switcher.
  • "cPanel service temporarily unavailable" — CloudPress couldn't read the hosting server's records at all. This affects the whole list, not one account; wait a moment and reload.

A change you make inside cPanel — a new addon domain, say — won't be reflected in the dashboard's list straight away. Work done through CloudPress shows up immediately; work done directly in cPanel takes a few minutes to appear.

Next steps