Overview
This document describes how to migrate your web accounts from unsupported third-party control panels to cPanel & WHM.
Warning:
- We strongly recommend that only advanced system administrators who understand migrations perform this process.
Your websites will likely experience downtime during this process.
cPanel, L.L.C. offers free migration services from the following third-party control panels:
- Odin Plesk (formerly Parallels)
- DirectAdmin
- Ensim
cPanel & WHM supports the following services:
Any other services on the third-party control panel require that you customize them to function in a cPanel & WHM environment. For more information, open a support ticket and our migration team will contact you.
If you do not host your account on one of these control panels, you must manually migrate your web accounts to a cPanel & WHM server.
If you experience difficulties with this process, open a support ticket and our migration team will contact you.
Migrate your accounts
Lower your DNS Time to Live.
Decrease your DNS records' Time To Live (TTL) on all of your account's domains. This forces clients to update their copy of the DNS zones that your nameservers host. We recommend that you perform this action several days before you begin the migration process. For information about how to lower your DNS records' TTL, read Virendra's TalkTech's Migrating Servers article.
Install cPanel & WHM on your new server
Before you transfer the accounts, install cPanel & WHM on your new server. To do so, follow the steps in our Installation Guide.
During the installation process, select a hostname and main IP address for the new server. You can perform this action in WHM's Basic WebHost Manager Setup interface (WHM >> Home >> Server Configuration >> Basic WebHost Manager Setup). The system configures the DNS zone files of restored accounts with those settings.
Important:
- Select a main IP address that is not your old server's main IP address.
- Select the same hostname, shared IP address, and nameservers as your old server.
Note:
cPanel, L.L.C. automatically provides you with free 15-day trial license when you install cPanel & WHM on a new server. However, if the Trial License Interface shows that your IP address is not eligible for a trial license, contact cPanel Customer Service.
Migrate the files.
After you create a new cPanel & WHM account, migrate your old account's files and directories to your new account's appropriate files and directories.
The following table describes files and directories that you commonly use when you transfer an account to a cPanel & WHM server:
Directory | Description | Notes | Examples |
---|---|---|---|
/home/user/public_html | This directory contains all of your files, directories, subdirectories, and content. |
| |
/home/user/mail | This directory contains all of the email files for every email account on the cPanel account.This includes any addon domains, parked domains (aliases), and subdomains. A directory for each domain, subdomain, addon domain, and parked domain exists in the | Users who migrate data to cPanel & WHM servers must convert any mbox data to the Maildir format. To do this, follow the directions in our How to Convert mbox Accounts to Maildir documentation.
| |
/home/user/tmp | This directory contains the temporary files for the account, as well as bandwidth and web statistics data. For example, you can migrate your original server's AWStats data to the | When you migrate the bandwidth and web statistics data to a cPanel & WHM server, the system uses the data to create web statistics files.
|
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/home/user/etc | This directory contains the email account password, shadow, and quota files for current email accounts. For example, you can migrate your original server's email account quota data to the | N/A | |
/home/user/ssl | This directory contains the SSL certificates associated with the domains on the cPanel account. | After you migrate the SSL certificates, you must activate them in the Manage SSL Hosts section of WHM's Manage SSL Hosts interface (WHM >> Home >> SSL/TLS >> Manage SSL Hosts). |
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/var/lib/mysql | This directory stores the MySQL® databases for every account on the server. |
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/var/lib/pgsql | This directory stores the PostgreSQL databases for every account on the server. |
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Migration completion and DNS updates.
After you migrate your content to your new cPanel & WHM server, perform the following steps:
- Confirm that all of your content and credentials migrated properly and that they function in the new environment.
Update your domain's nameservers to match the new nameservers on your cPanel & WHM server.
Note:
We recommend that you also edit the DNS records on your old server to point to your cPanel & WHM server so that all content forwards to the new server.
Additional documentation