Frequently Asked Questions

No. hstPanel is a one-time purchase. Pay once and own it forever — no subscriptions, no renewals, no per-account fees. The only ongoing cost is your server, which you'd pay for regardless of what panel you use.

Solo ($49) — 1 server, up to 5 domains. Great for personal sites or a single small client. Pro ($249) — 1 server, unlimited domains, priority support. Best for freelancers and small agencies. Agency ($699) — 1 server, unlimited domains, white-label branding, priority support. Unlimited ($1,398) — unlimited server installs, unlimited domains, white-label. For hosting providers running multiple servers.

The Solo, Pro, and Agency plans are licensed per server. The Unlimited plan covers as many servers as you need. Licenses are tied to the server's IP address.

The demo at hstpanel.net lets you explore the interface. The installer itself is free to run — your license key is required to unlock Pro/Agency features like unlimited domains and white-label branding.

Contact support within 14 days of purchase if you can't get hstPanel working on a supported OS and our team can't resolve it. We'll issue a full refund.

A fresh Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 VPS is strongly recommended. The installer configures Apache, nginx, MariaDB, Postfix, and other services. Running it on a server with existing software can cause port conflicts and broken configurations. Always start with a clean OS image.

Ubuntu 22.04 LTS and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (64-bit). Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is what we test on most and the recommended choice. The installer checks your OS version at the start and exits with an error if it's unsupported.

Between 5 and 15 minutes depending on your server's internet speed and CPU. The installer downloads around 200–400 MB of packages. You'll see live progress output the entire time.

The installer is designed to be resilient. Each package install retries up to 3 times, waits for dpkg locks automatically, and runs --fix-broken if needed. After install, a verification routine checks every component and attempts to fix failures. You can safely re-run the installer on the same server.

OpenVZ containers may have restrictions on kernel features that some services need (like certain iptables rules for Fail2ban). KVM-based VPS providers (IONOS, DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Hetzner) work best. LXC containers vary by host configuration.

v3.0.0 introduces a fully rebuilt one-command installer covering Apache, PHP 8.3, MariaDB, Postfix, Dovecot, ClamAV, Fail2ban, nginx, Node.js 20, and PM2. The installer includes automatic error recovery, post-install verification with 30+ checks, and auto-fix for failed components. The panel itself adds a live SSH dashboard with real-time server stats (OS, PHP, uptime, load, memory, disk) and service management (start/stop/restart any service with one click).

Yes — PHP 8.3 is installed by default. The installer adds 12 commonly needed extensions: mysql, curl, gd, mbstring, xml, zip, intl, bcmath, soap, opcache, imagick, and redis.

Yes. Each hosting account you create in WHM gets a separate cPanel login at the same panel URL. Clients can manage their own domains, email, files, and databases without accessing WHM or any other account's data.

Yes. From WHM → SSL you can issue free Let's Encrypt certificates for any domain hosted on the server. Certificates auto-renew 30 days before expiry — no manual renewal needed.

Yes — a full browser-based file manager is built into every cPanel account. It supports upload, download, edit, delete, rename, move, copy, extract ZIP/tar.gz, and permission management. No FTP client required.

Yes. hstPanel installs PHP 8.3, Apache, and MariaDB — everything WordPress needs. Create a hosting account, add the domain, create a database, upload WordPress files via the file manager, and run the WordPress installer. The WHM software installer can also do this automatically.

After install, these ports are open: 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP/nginx), 443 (HTTPS/nginx), 8443 (hstPanel UI), 25 (SMTP), 587 (SMTP submission), 993 (IMAPS), 995 (POP3S). Port 8090 (Apache) is internal only — not exposed externally.

Yes — if you already have nginx or Apache running on your server, the installer will conflict with them. Use a fresh server. The installer manages its own nginx and Apache configurations and they shouldn't be modified externally.

Absolutely. hstPanel doesn't interfere with SSH access. You always retain full root access to your server — hstPanel is just software that runs alongside your other services.

All services start automatically on reboot. nginx, Apache, MariaDB, Postfix, Dovecot, ClamAV, and Fail2ban are all enabled as systemd services. The hstPanel API server is managed by PM2, which is configured to start on boot via pm2 startup.