# Hosting Accounts

> The account is CorePanel's unit of hosting: one system user, one home directory, one primary domain, and every resource — web, mail, DNS, databases — that belongs to it.

Source: https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/
Last updated: 2026-09-07
Part of the CorePanel documentation — https://www.corepanel.net/docs

---

Everything CorePanel hosts belongs to an **account**. An account is one customer, one
project or one site, and it owns everything that goes with it: a system user, a home
directory, a primary domain, its DNS zone, its mailboxes, its databases, its
certificates and its resource limits.

If you have used cPanel or Plesk, this is the same idea as a cPanel account or a Plesk
subscription. All CorePanel editions use the same word — **account** — regardless of
whether you host one site or four hundred.

```
account "example"
├── system user        example  (uid/gid of its own)
├── home               /home/example
│   ├── public_html    the primary domain's document root
│   └── domains        one directory per addon domain and subdomain
├── primary domain     example.com   ── DNS zone, mail identity, TLS certificate
├── secondary domains  aliases and addon domains
├── subdomains         blog.example.com, staging.example.com…
├── mailboxes          info@example.com, …
├── databases          example_shop, example_wp, …
├── cron jobs          run as the account's user
└── limits             disk, bandwidth, mailboxes, databases, domains
```

## What creating an account actually does

Creating an account is a single operation in the panel, but on the server it provisions
a full hosting environment:

| Created | Detail |
|---|---|
| **A Linux user** | Its own uid/gid. Every file, PHP process and cron job of the account runs as this user, isolated from other accounts. |
| **A home directory** | `/home/<user>`, with `public_html` inside it as the primary domain's document root and `domains/` beside it for every addon domain and subdomain. |
| **An FTP account** | Same username, starting with the same password you set. |
| **A web site** | A vhost for `example.com` and `www.example.com`, served by CoreHttpd with its own PHP-FPM pool. |
| **A DNS zone** | `example.com` on CorePanel's own PowerDNS, pointing at this server, with the nameservers configured for the server. |
| **A mail identity** | The domain can receive and send mail; a DKIM key pair is generated and published. |
| **A TLS certificate** | Issued automatically once the domain resolves to this server. See [SSL/TLS Certificates](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/ssl-certificates). |

The order matters for troubleshooting: the system side is provisioned first, and if any
database step fails afterwards, CorePanel rolls the system side back. You never end up
with a Linux user for an account that does not exist.

## The parts of an account

### System user and isolation

The Linux user is the isolation boundary. PHP runs in a per-account FPM pool as that
user, cron jobs run as that user, uploaded files belong to that user. One account cannot
read another account's files.

The account's PHP version is chosen when the account is created and is used by every
site, subdomain and cron job it owns. When you do not pick one, CorePanel provisions the
highest PHP version installed on the server.

> **Note**
>
> The PHP version is set at creation time. There is no in-panel switch to move an existing
> account to a different PHP version — plan the version when you create the account.
### Primary domain

Every account has exactly one **primary domain**, given when the account is created. It
owns `public_html`, it defines the account's mail identity, and it cannot be deleted
while the account exists (deleting the account is what removes it).

On top of it an account can have **domain aliases**, **addon domains** and
**subdomains** — see [Domains and Aliases](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/domains) and
[Subdomains](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/subdomains).

### Passwords

An account has two credentials that start out identical and then live separate lives:

- the **account password** (used to log in to the panel as that account), and
- the **FTP password** of its first FTP user.

Changing one does not change the other. Both can be updated at any time from the
account's **Access** section.

Account passwords must be at least **12 characters** and contain lowercase, uppercase,
digits and at least one special character. The panel's generator produces a compliant
one for you.

### Resource limits

Every account carries a set of limits. **`0` means unlimited** — with a single exception,
*Applications*, where `0` means none (see the table below).

| Limit | Enforced on |
|---|---|
| Disk quota (MB) | The account's uid, by the filesystem — see the note below |
| Monthly bandwidth (MB) | Measured, not enforced — see the note below |
| Email accounts | Mailbox creation |
| MySQL databases | Database creation |
| FTP accounts | FTP account creation |
| Domain aliases | Adding an alias |
| Addon domains | Adding an addon domain |
| Subdomains | Adding a subdomain |
| Applications | Creating an application — **`0` here means none, not unlimited** |

Limits can be set one by one when you create the account, or inherited from a
[hosting package](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/hosting-packages) — a template that carries the whole
set. When a package is selected, its values win over anything typed in the form.

They are not fixed afterwards: [editing the account](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/editing) changes any
of them, applies a different package, or detaches the account from the one it has. A
limit below what the account already uses is refused, with the disk quota as the single
(deliberate) exception.

> **Disk quotas need filesystem support**
>
> CorePanel stores the disk limit for every account regardless, but the kernel only
> refuses writes when quotas are actually enabled on the filesystem holding `/home`. On a
> server where they are not, the panel shows the limit and the measured usage, but nothing
> stops an account from exceeding it. The quota is enforced per **uid**, so it counts
> everything the account owns — not only what is inside the document roots.
>
> Turning quotas on, what they count and what happens when an account goes over is covered
> in [Quotas and Usage](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/quotas).
### Monthly transfer

The account's **Overview** shows how much it has transferred this month, next to its disk
usage. The figure is collected from the web server every few minutes and resets at the
start of each month, **UTC** — not the server's local midnight, so the period is the same
one on every server a hosting provider runs.

> **Web traffic only, and nothing is cut off**
>
> Two things are worth knowing before you bill on this number.
>
> **It counts what the web server carried, and only that.** Mail, FTP, and anything an
> [application](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/applications) opens for itself are not in it, and neither are request
> headers or the TLS framing under them. So the figure is lower than what the network
> actually moved. Under-reporting is deliberate: it is the direction that never charges a
> customer for bytes we cannot point at — but if you are arriving from cPanel, which counts
> mail and FTP in the same total, expect the numbers to drop.
>
> **Exceeding the limit does not suspend anything.** The allowance is a figure to bill and
> to be notified about; the site keeps serving. If you want an over-limit account stopped,
> [suspend it](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/suspension).
>
> An account whose traffic the web server has not reported yet simply shows nothing, rather
> than a zero — a zero would be indistinguishable from the account having served nothing.
A gap can appear in the figures when the web server restarts: its counters live in memory,
so whatever an account served in the few minutes between the last collection and the
restart is not counted. The panel's log records the restart when it happens.

### The server-wide website limit

The limits above are *per account*. On top of them, the edition CorePanel is licensed
for caps how many **websites** the whole server may host:

| Edition | Websites |
|---|---|
| **Personal** (free) | 20 |
| **Pro** | Unlimited |
| **Business** | Unlimited |

A website is a **primary domain or an addon domain** — the two kinds that have a
document root and serve a site of their own. What does *not* count:

- **Domain aliases (parked domains).** They republish the primary domain's document
  root, which is already counted. You can keep parking names at the cap.
- **Subdomains.** Same site, another name below it.

The count is per server, not per account: it is the total of every primary and addon
domain across every account. It is deliberately counted by domain and not by account —
one account can hold any number of addon domains, each an independent site, so counting
accounts would make the limit meaningless.

**Where you see it.** In two places, both of which only appear on an edition that caps
websites — on Pro and Business they are simply not there:

- The **Dashboard** carries a *Websites* card under the system metrics: usage, a bar and
  how many slots are available.
- **Accounts**, next to the *New account* button, shows a compact meter reading
  `12 / 20 websites`.

Both turn amber for the last three slots and red when nothing is left. From the shell,
`corepanel edition websites` prints the same figures — and exits `1` when the allowance
is exhausted, so a provisioning script can check for room before it starts.

**What happens at the cap.** *New account* is disabled, and the addon type disappears
from the *Add domain* dialog — parking a domain still works. The same wall applies from
the CLI, from a [cPanel import](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/cpanel-import) and from a
[backup restore](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/backups): all of them refuse up front, before anything is
provisioned, rather than leaving a half-created account behind. Deleting a website frees
its slot immediately.

## Where to manage accounts

| Where | What you get |
|---|---|
| **Accounts** in the panel | The list of every account: primary domain, usage against quota, and per-account actions. |
| The **account workspace** | Opening an account — click its row, or the **›** button next to the delete one — gives you its own sections: Overview, Access, Account domains, Subdomains, SSL, Optimizations, Reverse proxy, Databases and Applications. **Edit account**, on Overview, changes its limits and owner details. **Access** also holds the switch for the account owner's own [client panel](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/client-panel), and **Log in as customer** — a 30-minute support session in [their own panel](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/client-panel#logging-in-as-a-customer). |
| `corepanel account …` | The same operations from the command line — see the [CLI reference](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/cli). |

Server-wide pages (Email accounts, DNS, WordPress, Cron jobs, Backups, WAF) work across
every account and let you pick which one you are working on.

## Every account has an owner

Every hosting account belongs to exactly one organisation: either you — the operator of
the server — or a [reseller](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/resellers) selling on it. On a server with no
resellers this is invisible: everything belongs to you, and nothing on any screen
mentions it.

Once a reseller exists, ownership decides what their administrators see: their own
accounts and nothing else, not even that the neighbours exist. Moving an account between
owners is one command and changes nothing else about it — no restart, no interruption,
the same limits. See [Resellers](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/resellers#moving-an-account-between-owners).

## Next steps

- [Creating and Deleting Accounts](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/creating) — the create form field by field
- [The Client Panel](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/client-panel) — how the account's owner signs in and manages their own hosting
- [Editing an Account](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/editing) — changing limits, package and owner details
- [Hosting Packages](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/hosting-packages) — reusable limit templates
- [Resellers](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/resellers) — selling hosting on this server through somebody else
- [Domains and Aliases](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/domains) — adding more domains to an account
- [Files and FTP Access](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/files) — the home directory layout and FTP
- [Databases](https://www.corepanel.net/docs/accounts/databases) — MySQL databases, users and the built-in manager