cPanel declared cPanel AI generally available on September 17, in a press release datelined Houston, and cPanel & WHM 138, the version that carries it, is now on the RELEASE tier at build 11.138.0.7. The release was first introduced on July 27. What arrives with it is the largest interface change cPanel has shipped in years, an assistant that can act inside a customer’s account, a conversational site builder, a hosting target for Node.js code written by other people’s AI tools, and a protocol that lets an AI agent operate a cPanel account on a standing grant of access.
The parts are not sold the same way. Meridian, the AI Assistant, AI App Hosting and MCP sit inside the ordinary license, listed on cPanel’s pricing page under every tier from Solo to Premier. Nova, the builder, is “exclusive to cPanel Partners” and is metered in AI credits, and neither cPanel nor WebPros has published what one credit buys or what a partner pays for it. The only public numbers are the retail plans that resellers have set for themselves. For a hosting provider, the September release is therefore two decisions: which of the free pieces to switch on, and whether to sell a builder whose unit cost the vendor has not stated.
Key facts
- The release: cPanel & WHM 138 introduced July 27, promoted to RELEASE at build 11.138.0.7, with STABLE still on the 136 branch. General availability of cPanel AI announced September 17.
- What is opt-in: Meridian is a theme alongside Jupiter, which stays the default. The AI Assistant requires Meridian and “separate enablement by the server administrator through panel.ini.” AI App Hosting is gated by the Node.js AI Toolkit flag in WHM Feature Lists. User-level MCP needs a connected WebPros Account.
- What is one-way: “Accounts that you created on Meridian cannot switch to Jupiter themselves.”
- What is metered: Nova and Nova for WordPress, partner-only, billed in AI credits. WebPros gives partners “credits to use the platform and test features without any charge.” No wholesale price and no definition of a credit have been published.
- The plugin cadence: Meridian 1.3.5-1, AI Assistant 2.03-1 and AI App Hosting 1.3.2-1 on September 16, AI Assistant 1.91-1 on September 10, Nova 3.7.1-1 in September, with no day stated in its release notes.
Six Hubs, a Ten-Minute Setup and a Door That Only Opens One Way
Meridian replaces Jupiter’s feature grid with six workspaces. cPanel’s August 17 post lists them: Websites, covering “Domains, DNS records, SSL/TLS certificates, PHP handlers, WordPress, and Sitejet”; Email; Files; Databases; Security, which gathers “SSL/TLS management, Web Application Firewall (WAF), 2FA, SSH keys, API tokens, and IP blocking”; and Performance, with “Bandwidth logs, disk and inode resource usage, and custom php.ini directives.” A command palette opens with Cmd+K on a Mac or Ctrl+K on Windows. The onboarding flow “is engineered to take a new account from initial login to a published, reachable website in under ten minutes,” and “If a domain already points to the server, DNS configuration prompts are automatically skipped.”
Administrators control the rollout from WHM. They can “preview it through the WHM Feature Showcase, enable it during account creation, or set it as the default theme for hosting packages in WHM.” cPanel’s own line is that “Switching interfaces changes only how cPanel is visually presented. Domains, email accounts, databases, files, and server configurations remain identical and unaffected.” The release notes add the exception that matters for a provider deciding on a package default: “Accounts that you created on Meridian cannot switch to Jupiter themselves.” An account that starts on Jupiter can move to Meridian and back. An account provisioned on Meridian is on Meridian unless the administrator intervenes. A host that sets Meridian as the default for a package is therefore choosing the interface for every new customer on it, not offering one.
The theme costs nothing beyond the license. cPanel’s product page says “Meridian is included as part of your standard cPanel license” with “no separate or additional license fee required,” and the pricing page lists “Meridian – AI-guided onboarding, setup and workflows” under all four tiers, Solo at $27.46 a month billed annually through Premier at $69.99. Panellicense, a license reseller, puts it more directly: “there’s no extra SKU to buy on top of your existing cPanel license.”
An Assistant That Reads, Then Asks Before It Writes
The AI Assistant is Meridian-only, and it does not switch itself on. cPanel’s September 16 post states that it “requires Meridian and separate enablement by the server administrator through panel.ini.” Once enabled, it “explains administrative tasks, provides step-by-step guidance, and diagnoses common account issues from available account data.” The product page adds the boundary on writes: the assistant “can take actions on a customer’s behalf, always with their confirmation first.”
That confirmation model has been changing week to week. The 1.91-1 release of September 10 consolidated multi-step requests into single approval cards and extended an approval’s validity to 24 hours, and also fixed password visibility in error messages. Version 2.03-1 followed on September 16 with non-English character support, further password handling changes, email recommendations and approval card changes. For a support team, the assistant is a tier-one channel the host does not staff but does answer for, and the release notes are the only record of what it may do on a given day.
Nova Is a Year Old, Partner-Only and Sold by the Credit
Nova is not new. James Lee, Principal Product Manager at WebPros, wrote in July: “We launched it on October 31, 2025. The tagline is ‘All it takes is a conversation.'” Five days later he built a QR code generator on stage at CloudFest USA in Miami, and “Hosting.com launched this way at CloudFest EU 2026 in March, and it’s been live on their platform since.” What is new in 138 is the placement: Nova and Nova for WordPress sit inside Meridian’s Guided Setup as a creation option next to Sitejet Builder and WordPress. The Nova 3.7.1-1 plugin, dated only September 2026 in its release notes, exists because “Some servers had the Nova Experience installed before Meridian became available. On those servers, the Nova (Meridian) and Nova for WordPress (Meridian) features did not appear in WHM’s Feature Manager.”
Lee is explicit about the distribution model: “Unlike most of the AI builders you’ve probably heard of, Nova isn’t a direct-to-consumer product.” Providers can run it on their own servers, since “From day one, hosting providers running cPanel could offer Nova to their customers using their own infrastructure,” or take it hosted, because “we’ve added Nova to WebPros Cloud, for providers who’d rather not run any of this infrastructure themselves.” He also says “we’re bringing Nova to WHMCS MarketConnect and Plesk too.” cPanel’s July post describes both Nova products as “currently available only to cPanel Partners,” and the product page repeats that they are “exclusive to cPanel Partners.”
The money is where the public record thins out. WebPros Cloud’s Nova page answers the cost question only for trial use: “No, access to Nova is free for our partners. You’ll get credits to use the platform and test features without any charge.” There is no published wholesale price per credit, and no published statement of what a credit is consumed by, whether a prompt, a build, a publish or something else. The retail side is visible because resellers have had to set it. Siteocity’s store lists Nova Free at $0 with 3 AI credits a month, one project and no publishing; Nova Start at $4.99 with 15 credits and one project; Nova Build at $10.99 with 35 credits and five projects; Nova Grow at $23.99 with 85 credits and 15 projects; and Nova Scale at $54.99 with 200 credits and 30 projects. Hosting.com’s March 24 launch, which we covered at the time, offered a Free plan with 5 AI build credits and one application, Startup with 15 credits and 20 GB, and Business with 25 credits, five applications and 50 GB, with dollar amounts not visible on the product page at launch. A provider pricing a Nova plan today is working backwards from a competitor’s retail card rather than forwards from a rate sheet.
The Same Company Sells It Direct
The awkward part of the partner-only label is who else holds a partner’s inventory. The WebPros message that LowEndBox reproduced lists, among what partners can offer, “WebPros Nova, AI-powered website and application building solution” next to Managed Cloud for WordPress, WHMCS Cloud, Business Email and Premium Shared Hosting. LowEndBox’s raindog308 made the case in May that this puts WebPros in direct competition with its licensees, and quoted the cPanel license clause under which “cPanel reserves the right to offer products and services, including, without limitation, the Software, to any Third Party Users” affected by a termination or expiration. The argument is that hosts now pay license fees to a company that also sells hosting, a builder and billing software to the same end customers.
cPanel’s answer is the rest of the release. The July post reports that “Since January 2026, Node.js domains running on cPanel servers have increased by 35%,” and cites figures that “58% of small businesses actively utilize generative AI tools” and that “Nearly two-thirds of site owners and business operators prefer AI-assisted creation models over manual, code-first development workflows.” AI App Hosting exists to catch that traffic: it deploys applications “built on platforms such as Claude, Lovable, Bolt, v0, and Replit,” and its availability “is controlled by the Node.js AI Toolkit flag in WHM Feature Lists, with expanded framework detection planned for a future release.” MCP goes further, and the September 16 post bounds it: “User-level MCP bounds agent actions to the user’s home directory and requires a connected WebPros Account.” Panellicense’s warning is the one an administrator should keep: “An MCP connection is a standing grant of access, not a one-off API call.”
Jesse Asklund, Chief Product Officer at WebPros, framed the release this way: “AI is changing how websites and applications are created, and every site and application still needs a secure, manageable place to run. Our ambition is to make cPanel the natural path from an idea generated anywhere to a live, secure and growing online presence, enabling hosting providers to meet customers at the point of creation and support them throughout their journey.” The press release says providers retain “control over customer access and AI-agent permissions.” HostingJournalist reports the company’s scale at “roughly 350,000 servers” and “more than 48 million domains.” On that base, the free pieces of cPanel AI will reach customers whether or not a host chooses them, through package defaults and Feature Lists. The metered piece will reach them at a price the host sets, on a cost the vendor has not yet disclosed.
