Applies to: All plans.
Your domains are managed in two different places at Maxinodes, and knowing which is which saves a lot of confusion. cPanel handles how your hosting account serves domains — pointing extra domains at folders, creating subdomains, and setting aliases. Your client area (the WHMCS portal at my.maxinodes.com) handles everything to do with the domain itself — registration, renewals, DNS records and email. This article maps out both.
Quick reference: cPanel vs client area
| Task | Where it lives |
|---|---|
| Add an addon domain | cPanel -> Domains |
| Create a subdomain | cPanel -> Domains |
| Create a domain alias (parked domain) | cPanel -> Domains |
| Set up a redirect | cPanel -> Domains -> Redirects |
| Manage DNS records (A, AAAA, CNAME, MX, TXT, NS, SRV, CAA) | client area -> Domains |
| Register, renew or transfer a domain | client area -> Domains |
| EPP/auth code, WHOIS, DNSSEC, auto-renew | client area -> Domains |
| Domain email forwarding | client area -> Domains |
| Create a mailbox | Microsoft 365 / Google Workspace admin |
What the cPanel Domains area does
Open cPanel -> Domains (reach cPanel by single sign-on from your client area: open the service, then Log in to cPanel). From here you can:
- Addon domains — host a completely separate website (a different domain name) on the same account, served from its own folder. See How to add an addon domain.
-
Subdomains — create a sub-section such as
shop.yourdomain.comorblog.yourdomain.com, each with its own folder. See How to create a subdomain. - Aliases (sometimes shown as the option labelled Aliases or "parked domains") — make a second domain show the same site as your main domain.
- Redirects — send visitors from one URL to another. See How to set up a domain redirect.
Result: the cPanel Domains area controls how the web server responds to each domain or subdomain — which folder it loads. It does not control your live DNS.
Per-plan limits
How many addon domains and subdomains you can create depends on your plan:
| Plan | Addon domains | Subdomains |
|---|---|---|
| Self-Managed Lite | 0 | 5 |
| Self-Managed Plus | 4 | 25 |
| Self-Managed Pro | unlimited | unlimited |
| Managed Starter | 0 | 25 |
| Managed Growth | 4 | 50 |
| Managed Business | unlimited | unlimited |
If you hit a limit, the path is to upgrade your plan. See How to upgrade or downgrade your plan.
What is NOT done in cPanel
Three important things do not live in cPanel on our platform — so please ignore any cPanel screen that appears to offer them:
-
DNS records. Your live DNS is managed by us, on our own nameservers, and you edit records (A, CNAME, MX, TXT and so on) in your client area -> Domains, not in the cPanel Zone Editor. The cPanel zone editor does not control your live DNS here. See How to manage DNS records in your client area. Our nameservers are
ns1.maxinodes.comandns2.maxinodes.com. Customer websites are served over both IPv4 and IPv6 (dual-stack): when your domain uses our nameservers, the zone we create contains both the A records pointing at185.185.49.198and the AAAA records pointing at2a00:7c80:0:286:c::10, for your domain,www,cpanelandftp— you do not have to add anything. - Domain registration and renewals. Registering, renewing, transferring, EPP/auth codes, WHOIS contact details, DNSSEC, the auto-renew toggle and domain-level email forwarding are all managed in your client area -> Domains.
- Mailboxes. We do not host email on the cPanel server. There is no cPanel webmail or "Email Accounts" feature to use. Email is Professional Email (resold Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace), and mailboxes are created in the Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace admin console. See How email works at Maxinodes.
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