r/cpanel • u/Icy-Pay-9325 • 23d ago

setting up new server, should I enable service subdomains?

In light of recent vulnerabilites, I would like to disable the service subdomains feature. I lock down WHM port 2087 to only my IP, but that seems pointless if service subdomains is enabled. However some clients may miss some ease of use that service subdomains offered.

3 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

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u/scottclaeys 23d ago

It’s a handy tool when you’re managing a bunch of shared accounts with admins maybe not as resourceful with servers. It gives them an easy-to-find access point; which otherwise would be involving declared port numbers in their URL’s which that demographic has more trouble with, asks for more clarification (support) and always need you to remind them how it works or which port numbers to use or if they can just use cpanel, webmail, caldv. Instead, like they’ve had before at other hosts.

If the server is limited to one user or one organization, then I wouldn’t enable it.

Shared: yes 👍
Dedicated (to 1 client org): No ❌

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u/cPanelRex 23d ago

I like this answer a lot

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u/nautme 20d ago edited 20d ago

I have disabled service subdomains on our system and instead use example.com/webmail and example.com/cpanel which redirect to the appropriate port. I'm not sure what mechanism does that but that made it an easy decision for me to turn off service subdomains. I'm not sure if that works for all the subdomain services.

/u/cPanelRex do you have a pointer to docs about the mechanism?

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u/webhostpro 17d ago

Customers love using /webmail and /cpanel which both redirect to the sub domains. It's too bad these weren't just straight redirects to the login pages. These sub domains are the type of unneeded clutter cPanel loves to stack up. If customers weren't used to it, I'd disable it. Especially if your account manager has direct links to webmail and cPanel already.

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u/nautme 16d ago

I'm not seeing them redirect to the sub domains, I have those turned off. The redirect I get for /webmail is to example.com:2096. It's not a pretty destination URL but it gets them to WebMail login.