Creating and Deleting Accounts

Creating an account provisions a complete hosting environment in one step: a system user, a home directory, a website, a DNS zone, a mail identity and a certificate. This page walks through the form field by field, and through what deletion does.

Before you create the account

You need two things — plus a free website slot if you are on the Personal edition, which hosts up to 20 (see the server-wide website limit):

1. The server’s basic configuration done — main IP address and nameservers. Without them account creation fails, because CorePanel would not know which address to publish in the new DNS zone. See Initial Server Setup.
2. A domain to use as the primary domain. It does not have to point at the server yet: the account is created either way, and the site starts answering as soon as DNS resolves. Certificate issuance also waits for that. See Preparing Your Domain.

Creating an account in the panel

Go to Accounts → Add account.

Field	What it does
Hosting package	Optional. Selecting one applies its resource limits and hides the manual limit fields. See Hosting Packages.
Domain	The primary domain, fully qualified (example.com). A leading www. is stripped — www.example.com becomes example.com.
Account password	Minimum 12 characters with lowercase, uppercase, a digit and a special character. Use Generate for a compliant one.
PHP version	The PHP version the account runs. Leave it on Default to get the highest version installed on the server.
Disk quota (MB)	0 = unlimited. Ignored when a package is selected.
Applications	CLI only (--max-apps). How many applications the account may run. 0 = none, and there is no unlimited value, so an account created without it cannot run applications until you grant them.
Pre-installed software	Optional. Installs WordPress on the new document root instead of leaving it empty.
Web mode	How the site is served: Automatic adapts to the content. Changeable later — see Serving Modes.
Owner name / email / description	Free-form metadata to help you identify the account later.

The username is derived from the domain by CorePanel; you do not choose it.

The password is used twice, then diverges

The password you set becomes both the account password and the password of the account’s first FTP user. From that moment they are independent — changing one does not change the other.

What you get back

When the account is created, CorePanel reports the account ID, the Linux username, the primary domain and the home directory. The site answers immediately on the server; from the internet it answers once the domain resolves here.

Creating an account from the CLI

# Interactive password prompt, highest installed PHP version
corepanel account create example.com

# Scripted: password from stdin, PHP 8.3, 5 GB quota
printf '%s' "$ACCOUNT_PASSWORD" | \
  corepanel account create example.com --password-stdin --php 8.3 --quota 5120

Prefer --password-stdin in automation: --password leaves the secret in your shell history and in ps. The full flag list is in the CLI reference.

After creation

A new account is usually followed by:

• Adding more domains — aliases and addon domains.
• Creating mailboxes for the primary domain.
• Creating a database for the application.
• Installing WordPress if you did not pick it as pre-installed software.
• Checking the certificate on the account’s SSL section once DNS resolves.

Changing an account after creation

From the account workspace:

Section	What you can change
Overview	Usage against limits, and — through Edit account — the limits themselves, the hosting package and the owner details.
Access	Account password and FTP password.
Account domains / Subdomains	Add and remove domains, aliases and subdomains.
SSL	The certificates covering the account’s domains.
Optimizations	Per-domain WebP, Early Hints and (Pro) minification.
Reverse proxy	Routes forwarding paths to local services.
Databases	MySQL databases and users.
Applications	Deployed applications, if you use them.

The PHP version and the primary domain are fixed for the life of the account.

Deleting an account

Deleting an account is immediate and irreversible. CorePanel removes, in order:

1. Applications, including their data outside the home directory (/opt/userapps, /var/opt/userapps).
2. Subdomains — their vhosts, certificates, document roots and DNS records.
3. Secondary domains (aliases and addon domains) — vhosts, DNS zones, certificates, DKIM keys and, for addons, their document roots.
4. The primary domain and the system account — the Linux user, the home directory with everything in it, the primary vhost, its DNS zone, its certificate and its DKIM key.
5. FTP accounts, mailboxes, MySQL databases and MySQL users — including the real databases and users on the MySQL server, not just CorePanel’s records.
6. Backup and import job history, and the account’s backup schedules.

Backup archives survive deletion

The .tar archives produced by account backups are deliberately not deleted. A backup exists so an account can come back after it is gone, so it outlives the account it describes — you can restore a deleted account from one.

Caution

There is no suspend-and-review step: deletion runs straight through. If you only want to take a site offline, remove its DNS record or point the domain elsewhere instead of deleting the account.