Deployment Models (Split · Unified · Vanity)

PUQ Web Hosting module WHMCS
Order now | Download | Community
Every product you sell has a Deployment mode set on the product's Module Settings → General tab. It decides how many HestiaCP accounts back each service and where the web, mail and DNS roles live. This is the single most important product decision.

The three modes

Mode
Hestia accounts per service
Best for

Split
A separate Hestia user per role — one web user, one mail user, one DNS user (each can live on a different server).
Classic shared/business hosting where you want maximum isolation and the freedom to put web, mail and DNS on different, independently‑scaled servers.

Unified
One Hestia user holds web and mail (and local DNS) for the service.
Simpler, denser, cheaper hosting where web and mail naturally live together on one node.

Vanity
A per‑service web user for one subdomain + one mailbox on your shared provider mail account.
Selling name.yourdomain.com websites and name@yourdomain.com mailboxes on a domain you own — see the dedicated Vanity Mode chapter.

Split deployment
In Split mode the module provisions up to three independent HestiaCP users for the service — for example customer-com-web, customer-com-mail and customer-com-dns. Each is placed on a server that has the matching capability, so the website, the mailboxes and the DNS zone can sit on completely different machines.
The admin service panel shows this clearly — a Web & DNS card and a separate Mail card, each with its own Hestia user, server and certificate:

Split is the mode to choose when you want to segment your fleet by role (the next page) and keep mailboxes off your web servers.
Unified deployment
In Unified mode a single Hestia user owns the website and the mailboxes, so web and mail are always co‑located. There is no separate mail user to manage. Unified products use a single combined account package and a single set of backups (role = all). Choose Unified when you run general‑purpose nodes that do both jobs and you want fewer accounts to manage.
Vanity deployment
Vanity is a different business model rather than a different server layout: you own a domain (e.g. benchwords.com) and sell slots on it. Each order becomes name.benchwords.com (a normal per‑service web account) plus name@benchwords.com (one mailbox on your shared provider mail user). The parent domain, its DNS zone and the provider mail account are never modified per order — the model is destructive‑safe by design.

Vanity has its own chapter because the setup (sellable parent domains, reserved names, the order flow and a drop‑anywhere shop widget) is substantial — see Vanity Mode.
Which roles does a product include?
Independently of the mode, the product's General tab lets you tick which roles the package includes — Web, Mail, DNS. Unticking a role (or setting its disk quota to 0 in the limits tab) simply omits it. For example, a "mail‑only" product ticks Mail and leaves Web off; a "website‑only" product ticks Web and DNS.
The limits for each ticked role are configured on the matching Web limits / Mail limits / DNS limits tab (or the single Vanity limits tab in Vanity mode) — see Installation & Configuration → Create a product.

Rule of thumb: Split = isolation + segmentation; Unified = density + simplicity; Vanity = a productised "personal site + email" offer on your own domain. You can sell all three side‑by‑side — they coexist on the same servers.