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PNLCS Documentation

Welcome! PNLCS is a free, open-source, self-hosted hosting billing and client management platform — an open alternative to WHMCS. This is the user guide: it explains how to run your hosting business with PNLCS, in plain language, with no prior WHMCS experience assumed. It also holds the complete API reference and the guide to the MCP server.

This documentation is growing

We are expanding these pages, and details may change between releases. If something is missing or does not match what you see, please open an issue.

New here and not sure where to start?

Follow these three pages in order and you'll have a working, selling billing system:

  1. First Login — sign in and secure your account
  2. Setup Checklist — configure the essentials
  3. Your First Sale — sell and provision your first plan end-to-end

What can PNLCS do?

  • Sell hosting, VPS, domains and SSL through a customer-facing shop and portal
  • Bill customers automatically — recurring invoices, reminders, suspensions, renewals
  • Provision accounts automatically on Panelica, cPanel, Plesk, DirectAdmin, HestiaCP, Proxmox and Vultr when an order is paid
  • Take payments via Stripe, PayPal, Authorize.Net and bank transfer
  • Support your customers with tickets, a knowledge base and announcements
  • Run in 30 languages, with themes, staff roles, reports and an API

How this guide is organized

Section What's in it
Getting Started The fastest path from a fresh install to your first paid, provisioned order
Concepts Plain-English explanations of the core ideas — clients, products, services, orders, invoices, servers, modules
Guides Task-by-task how-tos: email, payment gateways, connecting a server, selling domains, tax, custom client fields, migrating from WHMCS, and more
API Every API action: parameters, responses, errors, permissions and a working example, plus an OpenAPI file
MCP Server Connecting an AI assistant to PNLCS, and every tool it gets
Reference Scheduled commands and the developer API/hooks

Before you begin

You should already have PNLCS installed and be able to reach https://your-domain/admin/login. If not, see the installation instructions in the README or the Docker quick start.

Need help?

PNLCS is built and maintained by the team behind Panelica, a modern hosting control panel and a cPanel / Plesk alternative that needs no CloudLinux.