How to solve cPanel’s “Domain already exists, it was not added” problem

I encountered this error about 6 months ago, when trying to add a domain to my unlimited domains hosting account:

Error from domain wrapper: Domain already exists, it was not added.: <some.domain.com>

You get this error sometimes, when you are hosted using the wonderful cPanel. What happened to me was:

  1. I parked LornaTimbah.com which redirects automatically to WebGrrrl.net.
  2. Once I was ready to let LornaTimbah.com have its proper site, I deleted the domain from Parked Domains panel, and added it back via the Addon Domains panel.
  3. I get the Domain Already Exists error, even though it was not listed in the Addon Domains, nor was it listed in the Parked Domains panel confirming that it indeed has been deleted.

You can also get this error if you have just deleted a domain from the Addon Domains instead of Parked Domains, and then tried to add it back in again.

I googled for a solution at that time, but none was provided. So, I had to contact WPWebHost’s support superguy Foress and asked to fix it, which he amazingly did in just minutes even though the request was made via e-mail.

Only today, while installing some blogs for others, did I realize that this is actually a pretty easy problem to solve.

  1. In cPanel, go to your Subdomains panel.
  2. Find one that looks like the domain you’ve just deleted; in my case, it was lornatimbah.webgrrrl.net.
  3. Delete that subdomain.
  4. Now go back and add that domain in your Addon Domains or Parked Domains list.

And yeah, that should work.

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Posted on 5 January, 2009 under Life online and tagged with ,

11 comments

  1. Vee says:

    Thanks a lot! That helped me out. ๐Ÿ™‚

    1. Lorna says:

      I’m glad it did, Vee.

  2. tay says:

    found this while searching google to your error report “Error from domain wrapper: Domain already exists”

    I’m a little confused is this a solution to the original problem or how to prevent the problem?

    e.g. I hosted an orginal cpanel account : webpage.com
    with a parked domain of differentwebpage.org
    that had a subdomain of user.differentwebpage.org

    I have pieced together a new cpanel account sucessfully differentwebpage.org but now I am failing to create the subdomain user.differentwebpage.org

    1. Lorna says:

      Yes, this solution should address your issue.

      Prevent? It’s a bug in cPanel where only cPanel can solve. Since this is an old post, I believe the subsequent cPanel versions should have addressed this.

  3. Thanks SO MUCH! This worked and I felt dumb! I had deleted a domain and then tried to re-add it. It wouldn’t let me and I couldn’t delete it from the ftp either.

    Thanks again!

  4. Man I was struggling with this problem for over half an hour, thank you so much!

  5. lol….this was so easy and I thought I messed up something.I tried deleting folder from the files manager but nothing happened.This one worked.Thanks again!

    1. Lorna says:

      You’re welcome!

  6. Foscam says:

    Worked for me too…Like a charm

  7. Adrian says:

    This helped! Your amazing and thank you for sharing this.

  8. Mahesh says:

    Thanks. It worked for me too ๐Ÿ˜‰

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