How do I change my cPanel password?

September 15, 2026 · 3 min read · Markdown

Your cPanel password protects the whole hosting account, so it is worth changing if it has ever been shared, reused elsewhere, or typed into a machine you do not control. This guide covers changing the main cPanel password, changing the password on a single email address, and what to do if you cannot get in at all. For the first two sections you need to be logged in to cPanel.

Change your main cPanel password

1. Log in to cPanel.
2. In the Preferences section, click Password & Security.
3. Type your current password in the Old Password field.
4. Enter the new password twice, in New Password and New Password (Again). The Password Generator button builds a strong one and lets you copy it before you save.
5. Leave Enable Digest Authentication as it is unless you use Web Disk over an unencrypted connection.
6. Click the button to change your password.

One thing to plan for: the main FTP account and Web Disk use the same credentials as cPanel itself, so anything connecting with them (an FTP client, a deployment script, a backup tool on your computer) will stop working until you give it the new password. Extra FTP accounts you created yourself have their own passwords and are not affected.

Change the password on an email address

Mailbox passwords are separate from the cPanel password, and changing one does not change the other.

1. Log in to cPanel.
2. Under Email, click Email Accounts.
3. Find the address in the list and click Manage.
4. In the Security section, type a new password or generate one.
5. Click Update Email Settings at the bottom of the page.

Every phone, tablet and desktop mail app has the old password stored, so update each of them afterwards. Apps that keep retrying with stale credentials can trip login protection on the mail server, which looks like an outage but is not one. If the address is set up in several places, change the password and then work through the devices in one sitting.

If you cannot log in at all

The cPanel login screen may show a password reset link. Whether it appears, and whether it works, depends on how the account was set up and on the contact address stored for it, so this step varies. If the link is missing, or the reset message never arrives, contact us instead and ask for a reset. Be ready to confirm who you are, since we will not hand out account access on request alone.

If it didn't work

• The new password is rejected as too weak. cPanel scores the strength of what you type and refuses anything below its threshold. Use the Password Generator rather than adding a digit to something you already use.
• The old password is refused. Check that the caps lock key is off and that your browser has not autofilled a saved value over what you typed. Clearing the field by hand and retyping both entries usually settles it.
• Mail still will not connect after a password change. The device is almost always still sending the old password. Remove and re-add the account on that device if editing the stored password does not take, and give the server a few minutes if repeated failures have temporarily blocked the connection.

If you are still stuck, contact our team at /support with the domain on the account and we will take a look.

Stuck partway through? Support is answered by the engineers who run the servers, around the clock.

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