Nginx on cPanel: Engintron or cPanel NGINX Reverse Proxy

Updated: 29 September 2026 · Applies to: cPanel & WHM 138; Engintron 2.13 on AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux and CloudLinux 8 and 9

Engintron is a free, open-source add-on that puts Nginx in front of Apache on a cPanel server. Nginx serves static files (images, CSS, JavaScript) directly and adds a short "micro-cache" for dynamic pages, which lowers the load on Apache during traffic peaks. Since this article was first written, cPanel has added its own supported way to do the same thing, so there are now two options. We checked both on 29 September 2026.

Option 1: cPanel's own NGINX with reverse proxy (recommended)

cPanel & WHM includes Nginx as a reverse proxy in front of Apache through the ea-nginx package. It is supported by cPanel, updates with cPanel, and adds new accounts and domains to the Nginx configuration automatically.

1. In WHM, open Software > NGINX Manager (or add the ea-nginx package in EasyApache 4).
2. Install it and check your sites.
3. Restart it only with /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/restartsrv_nginx or WHM's Service Manager, not with the nginx command.

Its page cache is on by default. After changing a site, clear the cache for that account with /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/ea-nginx clear_cache USERNAME. It is not compatible with LiteSpeed Web Server.

Option 2: Engintron

Engintron is maintained on GitHub (version 2.13 of the install script when we checked, with changes as recent as September 2026). Its documentation lists support for cPanel-certified Enterprise Linux 8 and 9 variants, such as AlmaLinux and Rocky Linux, with or without CloudLinux. Ubuntu is not supported yet; the project plans it for version 3.

Before installing, know what the script does: it runs a full system update, enables EPEL and cPanel's experimental EasyApache repository, installs a set of extra tools, and installs Nginx from nginx.org's repository. Read the script first on a production server.

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/engintron/engintron/master/engintron.sh | bash -s -- install

After a few minutes, refresh WHM: Engintron appears at the end of the Plugins section, with controls for Nginx, Apache and MySQL and editors for their configuration files. To remove it and restore the previous setup:

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/engintron/engintron/master/engintron.sh | bash -s -- remove

Which one to choose

• Use cPanel's ea-nginx unless you have a specific reason not to: it is supported by cPanel, and cPanel support can help with it.
• Engintron is an option if you already use it and like its WHM dashboard and micro-cache behaviour. Do not run both: they would compete for ports 80 and 443.
• Behind Cloudflare or another proxy, make sure the real visitor IP reaches Apache and your logs (both options handle this; check after setup).

If you would like us to set up and tune Nginx on your cPanel server, see our cPanel server management.

Official documentation: cPanel: NGINX with reverse proxy and Engintron on GitHub.