How to Create Hosting Packages in WHM

A package in WHM is a saved template of limits and features. When you create a customer account you pick a package, and WHM applies everything at once. Get your packages right before your first sale and account creation becomes a ten-second job.

Plan the packages before you build them

Decide what you are actually selling first. Three tiers works better than seven — see our guide to pricing hosting plans for why.

For each tier, decide:

• Websites allowed — the clearest differentiator to a customer
• Disk space — in GB
• Bandwidth — monthly transfer
• Email accounts
• Databases
• Subdomains and FTP accounts

Write these down as a table before touching WHM. Changing a package later is possible but it does not retroactively apply to existing accounts, so churn here is expensive.

Creating a package

In WHM, open Packages → Add a Package.

Package Name — use something your customers would recognise, like starter or business. This name appears in cPanel and in billing software, so avoid internal codes like pkg-01-v2.

Resources:

• Disk Quota — set a real number, not unlimited. Unlimited means one customer can fill the server and take everyone else down with them.
• Monthly Bandwidth — same reasoning.
• Max FTP Accounts / Email Accounts / Databases / Subdomains — from your plan table.
• Max Addon Domains / Parked Domains — this is what "number of websites" actually maps to. An addon domain is a separate site in the same account.

Settings:

• cPanel Theme — jupiter unless you have a reason otherwise.
• Locale — English.
• Feature List — see below.

Feature lists control what customers can see

Packages set quotas. Feature Lists control which icons appear in cPanel. They are separate, and this trips people up.

Under Packages → Feature Manager, create a list per tier. Things worth disabling on entry plans:

• Terminal / SSH access — a support liability on a shared entry plan
• Cron jobs — a common vector for resource abuse
• Remote MySQL — rarely needed, occasionally exploited

Things to leave enabled on everything:

• File Manager, phpMyAdmin, Email Accounts — basic function
• Softaculous — one-click WordPress is a selling point
• SSL/TLS Status — customers should be able to run AutoSSL themselves
• Backup / JetBackup — self-service restore saves you support hours

Assign the feature list to the package when you create it.

Creating an account

Account Functions → Create a New Account. Enter the domain, a username, a strong password and the customer's email. Pick your package from the dropdown and confirm the nameservers are yours, not upstream.

WHM creates the account, sets up DNS and sends the welcome email. Customise that template first under Server Configuration → Customization, or it goes out quoting our details instead of yours.

Limits worth setting before your first customer

• Never sell unlimited disk. Someone will use it for backups of something enormous.
• Set a sensible inode limit if your tier allows it. A million small files hurts a server more than a few large ones, and it breaks backups.
• Cap email sending per hour. One compromised account sending spam gets the server's IP blacklisted and every customer's mail starts bouncing. This single setting prevents your worst possible day.
• Enable a suspension threshold so runaway accounts are throttled rather than taking the node down.

Upgrading a customer

Account Functions → Upgrade/Downgrade an Account, choose the new package, apply. It takes effect immediately with no migration and no downtime — which is exactly the argument for starting customers on a small plan.

Automating it

Once you have more than a handful of customers, connect billing software so accounts are created on payment rather than by hand. See our guide to connecting WHMCS to WHM.

Do not automate before your packages are settled. Fixing package definitions across an automated fleet is much more work than fixing them across five manual accounts.