News: PHP 8.5 Now Available - and Planned Retirement of PHP 8.1

We've added PHP 8.5 to our cPanel hosting cluster. PHP 8.5 is the newest release of the PHP language and is now available for your sites alongside our other supported versions. You can switch to it at any time from your cPanel.

Supported PHP Versions

Our cPanel servers currently offer these PHP versions:

• PHP 8.3 - stable and widely compatible, a solid default for most sites
• PHP 8.4 - current stable release with performance improvements
• PHP 8.5 - newest release, with the latest language features and the longest support window

How to Change Your PHP Version

You can select your PHP version yourself in cPanel under MultiPHP Manager. Choose the domain you want to change, pick the PHP version, and apply. The change takes effect right away. If you would rather we handle it for you, just open a support ticket and let us know which version you want.

What's New in PHP 8.5

PHP 8.5 (released November 2025) brings a number of useful additions for developers:

• Pipe operator (|>) - chain functions left to right for cleaner, more readable code
• Built-in URI extension - parse and normalize URLs to modern standards without extra libraries
• Clone with properties - update object properties at the same time you clone them, which makes immutable/readonly classes easier to work with
• New array_first() and array_last() functions - grab the first or last value of an array directly
• The #[\NoDiscard] attribute - warns when a function's return value is accidentally ignored, helping catch bugs early
• Better error backtraces on fatal errors, which makes troubleshooting faster

What to Watch For When Upgrading

PHP 8.5 is a smooth upgrade for most modern code, but a few older patterns are now deprecated and may produce warnings or need updating. If you maintain your own code, look out for these before switching:

• Old-style type casts - (boolean), (integer), (double), and (binary) are deprecated. Use (bool), (int), (float), and (string) instead.
• The backtick shell operator is deprecated - use shell_exec() instead.
• Deprecated cleanup calls like curl_close() and xml_parser_free() - these have done nothing since PHP 8.0 and can simply be removed.
• The mysqli_execute() alias is deprecated - use mysqli_stmt_execute().
• Using null as an array key is deprecated - use an empty string instead.

If you run a CMS or framework such as WordPress, Joomla, or Laravel, make sure your core, plugins, themes, and dependencies are up to date first, then test on PHP 8.5 before making it your live version. A good approach is to switch a staging or test domain to PHP 8.5, confirm everything works, then move your main site over.

For the full list of changes, see the official PHP 8.5 release announcement and the PHP 8.5 migration guide, which documents every new feature and backward-incompatible change.

What You Need to Do

No immediate action is required to keep your site running today. The one thing to plan for is moving any sites still on PHP 8.1 to PHP 8.3 or newer before September 1, 2026.