Plugin to allow acme dns-01 authentication of a name managed in cPanel. Useful for automating and creating a Let's Encrypt certificate (wildcard or not) for a service with a name managed by cPanel, but installed on a server not managed in cPanel.

pip install certbot-dns-cpanel

Download the file credentials.ini.example and rename it to credentials.ini. Edit it to set your cPanel url, username and password.

# The url cPanel url
# include the scheme and the port number (usually 2083 for https)
certbot_dns_cpanel:cpanel_url = https://cpanel.example.com:2083

# The cPanel username
certbot_dns_cpanel:cpanel_username = user

# The cPanel password
certbot_dns_cpanel:cpanel_password = hunter2

You can now run certbot using the plugin and feeding the credentials file. For example, to get a wildcard certificate for *.example.com and example.com:

certbot certonly \
--authenticator certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel \
--certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel-credentials /path/to/credentials.ini \
-d 'example.com' \
-d '*.example.com'

You can also specify a installer plugin with the --installer option:

certbot run \
--authenticator certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel \
--installer apache \
--certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel-credentials /path/to/credentials.ini \
-d 'example.com' \
-d '*.example.com'

You may also install the certificate onto a domain on your cPanel account:

certbot run \
--authenticator certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel \
--installer certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel \
--certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel-credentials /path/to/credentials.ini \
-d 'example.com' \
-d '*.example.com'

Depending on your provider you may need to use the --certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel-propagation-seconds option to extend the DNS propagation time.

A docker image badjware/certbot-dns-cpanel, based on certbot/certbot is provided for your convenience:

docker run -it \
-v /path/to/credentials.ini:/tmp/credentials.ini \
badjware/certbot-dns-cpanel \
certonly \
--authenticator certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel \
--certbot-dns-cpanel:cpanel-credentials /tmp/credentials.ini \
-d 'example.com' \
-d '*.example.com'

• https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/DD/Guide+to+cPanel+API+2
• https://certbot.eff.org/docs/