Installing Vanta Panel

This guide takes you from a fresh server to a working panel in a few minutes.

Requirements

• A fresh VPS running Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (or newer) or Debian 12 (or newer). Older releases ship PHP 7.x, which the panel does not support — the installer stops with a clear message if the version is too old.
• 64-bit CPU (x86_64 or arm64).
• ~2 GB RAM and ~3 GB free disk minimum.
• Root access (run the installer with sudo).
• Nothing else already serving ports 80/443 — no existing nginx or Apache.

Recommended ports open at your VPS provider's firewall: 80 and 443 for the panel and websites, 22 for SSH, and the mail ports (25, 587, 465, 143, 993, 110, 995) only if you use email.

Run on a clean server. The installer configures Apache, MariaDB, Postfix, Dovecot and more; mixing it with an existing web or mail stack is unsupported.

Install

Run this on the server as root:

curl -fsSL https://get.vantapanel.com | sudo bash

That is the whole install. The command fetches the release manifest, verifies the download, extracts it, and hands over to the bundle's own installer.

What the one-liner checks before installing anything

• It confirms the server can reach the internet, and stops with a clear message if not — a missing default route or a provider firewall is the usual cause.
• It downloads the release and checks its SHA-256 against the published manifest.
• It then verifies a detached Ed25519 signature over the release, against a public key pinned inside the installer itself. A SHA-256 alone only proves the download matches what the server said; the signature proves the release was published by us. If the signature does not verify, the install aborts rather than running unverified code.

To download and verify a release without installing it, set VP_BOOTSTRAP_ONLY=1:

VP_BOOTSTRAP_ONLY=1 curl -fsSL https://get.vantapanel.com | sudo bash

The installer runs pre-flight checks (OS, PHP version, architecture, disk, ports) and is idempotent — re-running it is safe and never resets your database password or admin account.

Installing from a downloaded bundle

If you already have a release zip — an air-gapped server, or a version you are pinning deliberately — extract it and run the installer directly:

unzip vantapanel.zip
cd vantapanel
sudo bash bin/install.sh

This skips the signature check that the one-liner performs, so only do it with a bundle you obtained yourself and trust.

Optional install settings

Set any of these environment variables before the command, for example curl -fsSL https://get.vantapanel.com | sudo DOMAIN=panel.example.com bash:

• DOMAIN — brand the panel to this domain and use mail.<domain> as the mail hostname. If omitted, the panel is reached by the server's public IP on a self-signed certificate.
• ADMIN_USER — admin username (default root).
• ADMIN_PASS — admin password (default: a random one is generated and printed).
• VANTAPANEL_SKIP_MAIL=1 — skip the mail server (Postfix/Dovecot/SpamAssassin).
• VANTAPANEL_SKIP_WEBMAIL=1 — skip Roundcube webmail.
• VANTAPANEL_WHM_GATE=1 — add an extra HTTP Basic Auth prompt in front of /vwhm as defence in depth. Off by default, because the panel already has its own login and optional 2FA, and a second prompt with a different password confuses first-time admins.

When it finishes, the installer prints a banner with your access URLs and logins — save those immediately. They are also written to /root/vantapanel-install.txt, readable only by root.

First login

Open the admin panel at https://<your-domain-or-IP>/vwhm and sign in with the admin username and password the installer printed. That is one login — on a default install there is no second prompt.

If you deliberately enabled VANTAPANEL_WHM_GATE=1, you will be asked twice: first the browser's Basic Auth prompt, then the panel's own login.

Using the IP with no domain? The certificate is self-signed, so your browser warns on the first visit — click through to proceed. See Getting a trusted SSL certificate to fix this.

The user panel for hosting accounts lives at https://<your-domain-or-IP>/vpanel.

Reset the admin password

If you lose the password, reset it from the server:

sudo -u paneluser php /opt/vantapanel/bin/vantapanel-admin.php root 'NewPassword'

Upgrading

Re-run the one-liner. It is safe, preserves your data, and never resets your admin account or database password:

curl -fsSL https://get.vantapanel.com | sudo bash

Alternatively, the vWHM Updates page applies new versions in place with one click, and automatic updates are on by default — the panel checks daily and installs new signed releases by itself, then emails you the result. Every update is SHA-256 and Ed25519 verified and backs up the current install first. See Updating Vanta Panel.