How to Purchase and Install WHMCS

Overview

WHMCS offers an all-in-one billing and automation platform that automates all aspects of a web hosting business. This document describes how to install WHMCS on your cPanel account. You can purchase a license for WHMCS in the cPanel store. For more about managing WHMCS, read the WHMCS documentation.

Install as Site Software (cPanel and WHM version 86 and later)

Note:

Your hosting provider must enable this cPAddon in WHM’s Install cPAddons Site Software interface (WHM >> Home >> cPanel >> Install cPAddons Site Software).

One-click installation

For the one-click installations, log in to your cPanel account and perform the following steps:

Note:

The one-click installation requires you to setup a contact email address in cPanel’s Contact Information interface (cPanel >> Home >> Preferences >> Contact Information).

  1. Navigate to cPanel’s Site Software interface (cPanel >> Home >> Software >> Site Software).

  2. Under Automation, click WHMCS.

  3. Under the Install tab, select a domain from the Installation Domain menu. The system will check whether the domain has a WHMCS license.

    • If the domain owns a license, click Install.

    • If you posses a license for the domain, but the system does not detect it, click Enter a license manually. Enter your WHMCS license in the License Key text box and click Install.

    • If the domain does not posses a license, click Buy License. The system will connect to the cPanel Store so you can buy a license. After your purchase, the cPanel Store will return you to the Site Software interface. Then, click Install.

  4. After the installation completes, the interface will provide a success message, the username, password, and the WHMCS administration URL.

Advance configuration installations

For advanced configuration installations, log in to your cPanel account and perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to cPanel’s Site Software interface (cPanel >> Home >> Software >> Site Software).

  2. Under Automation, click WHMCS.

  3. Under the Install tab, select a domain from the Installation Domain menu. The system will check whether the domain has a WHMCS license.

  4. Click Show Advanced Configuration. The interface will display additional configuration options.

    Note:

    • If you have not entered an email address in cPanel’s Contact Information interface (cPanel >>Home >> Preferences >> Contact Information), the interface will automatically display the advanced configuration options.

    • If you posses a license for the domain, but the system does not detect it, click Enter a license manually. Enter your WHMCS license in the License Key text box.

    • The Advanced Configuration feature does not support the Buy License option. You can visit the cPanel Store in a new browser window to purchase a WHMCS license.

  5. Under Installation URL, enter a directory path. To install directly to the domain’s document root, leave the text box blank.

  6. Enter an administrator username in the Admin User text box.

  7. Enter and confirm the new password in the appropriate text boxes.

    Note:
    • The system evaluates the password that you enter on a scale of 100 points. 0 indicates a weak password, while 100 indicates a very secure password.
    • Some web hosts require a minimum password strength. A green password Strength meter indicates that the password is equal to or greater than the required password strength.
    • Click Password Generator to generate a strong password. For more information, read our Password and Security documentation.

  8. Enter your email address in the Email text box.

  9. Click Install.

  10. After the installation completes, the interface will provide a success message and the WHMCS administration URL. When you browse to the URL, log in with the username and password that you provided during the installation process.

Install WHMCS as Site Software (cPanel and WHM version 84 and earlier)

Note:

  • Your hosting provide must enable this cPAddon in WHM’s Install cPAddons Site Software interface (WHM >> Home >> cPanel >> Install cPAddons Site Software).

  • This cPAddon is only available in cPanel & WHM version 76 and later.

  • This cPAddon requires EasyApache 4.

  • The one-click installation requires you to setup a contact email address in cPanel’s Contact Information interface (cPanel >> Home >> Preferences >> Contact Information)

  1. Navigate to cPanel’s Site Software interface (cPanel >> Home >> Software >> Site Software).

  2. Under Automation, click WHMCS.

  3. Under the Install tab, select a domain from the Installation Domain menu and click Install.

For advanced configuration installations, log in to your cPanel account and perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to cPanel’s Site Software interface (cPanel >> Home >> Software >> Site Software).

  2. Under Automation, click WHMCS.

  3. Under the Install tab, click Show Advanced Configuration.

  4. Select a domain from the Installation URL menu. You can enter directory if you desire.

  5. Enter an administrator username in the Admin User text box.

  6. Enter and confirm the new password in the appropriate text boxes.

    Note:
    • The system evaluates the password that you enter on a scale of 100 points. 0 indicates a weak password, while 100 indicates a very secure password.
    • Some web hosts require a minimum password strength. A green password Strength meter indicates that the password is equal to or greater than the required password strength.
    • Click Password Generator to generate a strong password. For more information, read our Password & Security documentation.

  7. Enter your email address in the Email text box.

  8. Click Install.

After the installation completes, a success message that contains the WHMCS administration URL will appear. When you browse to the URL, you can log in with the username and password you provide during the installation process. The WHMCS interface will prompt you to agree to the license agreement and then prompt you to enter your license key. If you need a license key, you can purchase one from the the cPanel store.

Install WHMCS Manually

Before you install WHMCS, you will need to install ionCube® and set up your database.

  • To install ionCube, follow the directions in our PHP Loader: ionCube 6 documentation.
  • After you install ionCube, follow the instructions in our MySQL Database Wizard documentation to set up your database.

Install WHMCS

To install WHMCS, perform the following steps:

  1. Navigate to the Download WHMCS website.

  2. Enter you license key in the text box and click Validate and Download. The system will download a .zip file that contains the WHMCS files.

  3. Unzip the contents of the .zip file to a folder on your computer.

  4. In the WHMCS folder, rename the configuration.php.new file to configuration.php.

  5. Upload the WHMCS folder to your website. You may rename the folder, if desired.

    Warning:

    You cannot use the name admin for the WHMCS folder. The administration directory uses admin as a name.

    Note:

    If the system returns an error, upload the file in binary mode.

  6. Navigate to example.com/whmcs/install/install.php, where example.com represents your domain. If you uploaded the WHMCS files to a directory other than public_html, paste that path after your domain name in the URL.

  7. Follow the instructions to complete the installation.

  8. Change the permissions on the directories. To do this, run the following commands: 

    chmod 400 configuration.php
chmod 777 attachments
chmod 777 downloads
chmod 777 templates_c

  9. Navigate to the directory where you uploaded WHMCS and delete the install directory.

  10. Log in to your WHMCS account with your license key.