cPanel® & WHM® plugin for MailChannels Inbound Filtering

Overview

MailChannels Inbound Filtering filters out spam, phishing attacks, and malware threats before they reach your cPanel mail servers. Server administrators can monitor, provision, and maintain domain protection directly from the WHM admin dashboard.

Key Benefits

• Granular Protection: Choose to protect all domains running on the cPanel server or secure a specific, hand-selected subset of domains.

• Real-Time Status Tracking: Clear visibility into the protection state of every local domain via the WHM admin control center.

• Multi-Subscription Support: If your hosting infrastructure maintains multiple service profiles, easily dictate which specific contract allocation to provision against.

• Automated DNS Provisioning: Eliminate manual entries with options to dynamically rewrite downstream settings and MX targets upon activation.

• Bulk Handling: Streamline high-density deployment rules for Addon and Parked domains across the node using background batch utilities.

Prerequisites & Requirements

Before initiating the installation, verify your server ecosystem fulfills the following baselines:

Installation & Maintenance

1. New Plugin Installation

To provision the MailChannels plugin v3 on a cPanel instance, log into your server terminal via SSH as a superuser (root) and execute the deployment sequence:

wget https://s3.amazonaws.com/mailchannels-reseller/plugins/mailchannels-cpanel-v3-installer \
&& bash mailchannels-cpanel-v3-installer

2. Upgrading from v2

⚠️ Important Upgrade Notice

If the legacy v2 cPanel plugin is currently active on the system, it must be removed. The v3 installer script will automatically look for and prompt you to remove the v2 plugin. If you decline the prompt, the installer will safely terminate, and you must manually drop the v2 footprint before attempting to run the v3 script again.

3. Uninstalling the Plugin

To safely strip the plugin, execute the core uninstallation script as the root user:

/usr/local/mailchannels/bin/uninstall.sh

Available Flags

• --purge : Completely wipes all associated log footprints (/var/log/mailchannels) and active config records (/etc/mailchannels) from disk.

  • Note: If the uninstaller script detects that an outbound filtering relay layer is active when this flag is thrown, it disables the relay without showing an interactive prompt.

  • Note: If you ran the script without the --purge flag, log and configuration files remain in place.

Navigation & Initial Setup

1. Log into your cPanel / WHM Admin Dashboard.

2. Utilize the search box at the top of the left navigation pane and search for "MailChannels".
   

3. Click the menu option to launch the interactive management environment in a separate browser tab.

API Key Synchronization

1. Inside the user interface, click Configuration on the left navigation bar.

2. Click the API section header to expand the drop panel.

3. Retrieve your unique API token directly from the MailChannels Host Console API Keys Page.

4. Input your token into the field provided and click Update.
   

Inbound Configuration Reference

To customize inbound validation routines, expand the Inbound dropdown panel inside the main Configuration view.

ℹ️ Status Check Block

If you have not verified your core authentication parameters, the menu will trigger an alert indicator as shown in inbound_plugin_config.png: "Your don't have a valid API key set up. Please set up your API key before select subscription." Resolve this by syncing your Master API signature before setting delivery targets.

Configuration Fields & Toggles

Subscription

Select the specific registration profile under which your web domains should be provisioned. If your account holds only a single subscription, it will default automatically. Adjusting this tier marker will not retroactively alter active domains; it impacts future provisions only.

Automatically protect newly added domains

• Checkbox: Automatically protect newly added domains.

• Function: Automatically slots newly launched cPanel accounts into the scanning queue. For robust coverage, pairing this toggle with the Automatically update DNS configuration feature is recommended.

Automatically deprovision removed domains

• Checkbox: Automatically deprovision removed domains, including parked/addon domains.

• Function: Automatically drops domains from the subscription matrix when they are deleted from cPanel, freeing up license pool allocations. (Enabled by default).

Automatically update DNS configuration

• Checkbox: Automatically update DNS configuration when protecting a domain.

• Function: Instructs the cPanel nameserver daemon to automatically write the required downstream validation indicators and MX records into the host zone file upon protection, and remove them if unprotected. (Enabled by default).

Process parked and addon domains

• Checkbox: Process parked and addon domains during bulk and automatic protection operations.

• Function: Broadens automated background operations to include nested parked and addon domains. Existing MX structures are safely cloned into target downstream parameters and replaced with MailChannels entry strings. Unprotecting reverses this translation.

Redirect mail to custom downstream address

• Checkbox: Redirect mail to custom downstream address (defaults to MX if not selected)

• Function: Advanced routing switch that manually points processed clean inbound traffic to a designated explicit downstream delivery boundary rather than following standard MX lookups.

Bulk Operations & Threat Resolution

Beyond individual account configuration options, WHM administrators can invoke mass updates via the Protect Selected or Protect All macro modules.

Reviewing Operational Summaries

Following a bulk command, a detailed evaluation diagnostic modal is presented:

• Shows a breakdown of Completed, Skipped, and Failed accounts.

• Data columns are completely filterable; clicking on the Status header organizes failures collectively for fast triage.

• Administrators can trigger a localized Retry for isolated accounts or click Retry All Failed to re-queue anomalous jobs.

Pro-Tip

To discover exactly why a specific domain failed to provision during a bulk macro action, simply hover your mouse pointer over the designated account's status field. A popover dialog will instantly render showing the raw server error dump.