Hosting Control Panels: Part 6 — Plesk

Plesk — the world’s second most widespread commercial hosting control panel after cPanel. Unlike cPanel, it runs not only on Linux but also on Windows Server, and its capabilities are extended by an extensions catalog. Plesk, like cPanel, is owned by WebPros.

Important for Russian users: as of 31 March 2026 WebPros stopped servicing customers from Russia and Belarus; subscriptions for Plesk and cPanel were discontinued. It is not possible to officially buy or renew a Plesk license from Russia. This part of the series describes how the panel is organized and how to migrate away from it.

How Plesk is structured

Plesk unites server administrators, resellers and customers in a single interface. The primary unit is a subscription: a set of domains with resources and limits defined by a service plan. The owner of a single server operates in Plesk as an administrator and creates subscriptions for their sites; a hosting provider sells subscriptions to customers.

Features

• Linux and Windows. On Linux — Nginx and Apache; on Windows Server — IIS; support for ASP.NET and Microsoft SQL Server databases on Windows.
• Sites and PHP. Multiple PHP versions selectable per site, Node.js, deployment from a Git repository.
• Databases. MySQL/MariaDB, PostgreSQL, on Windows — Microsoft SQL Server.
• WordPress. WP Toolkit: installation, updates, cloning, backups and security checks for WordPress sites. In the Web Admin edition — a limited version (WP Toolkit SE); in Web Pro and Web Host — the full toolkit.
• Mail. Mailboxes and webmail, SpamAssassin anti-spam.
• Extensions. Extensions catalog: Docker, Let’s Encrypt, Sitejet site builder, backups to external storage, security tools.
• Backups and migration. Built-in backups and Plesk Migrator — a migration tool from other servers, including from cPanel.

What is outdated in older descriptions. Kaspersky Anti-Virus has been removed from Plesk: in version 18.0.64 (17 September 2024) the Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Servers extension is automatically removed and its license renewals were discontinued. Plesk recommends replacing it with Sophos Anti-Virus. CentOS 7 remains formally in the list of supported systems, but the distribution itself has not received updates since July 2024.

Supported systems and requirements

According to Plesk Obsidian documentation:

• Linux: Ubuntu 18.04–26.04, Debian 10–13, AlmaLinux 8–10, Rocky Linux 8, CloudLinux 7–9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8–9, CentOS 7;
• Windows: Windows Server 2016, 2019, 2022 and 2025.

Minimum for Linux — 1 GB of RAM and 1 GB swap, 20 GB of disk; for Windows — 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of disk. For hosting many sites the documentation recommends planning about 1 GB of RAM per 40–50 sites.

Editions and pricing

Plesk licenses differ by number of domains and feature set. Prices for VPS on the Plesk site (September 2026, with an increase effective 1 January 2026):

Prices are higher for dedicated servers. PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server modules are included in all editions.

How to migrate away from Plesk

1. Backup. In Plesk: “Tools & Settings → Backup Manager” — a full server backup or backups of individual subscriptions. Download it to your machine.
2. Inventory. PHP versions, cron jobs, mailboxes, DNS records, installed extensions — things that are not always migrated automatically.
3. Migration to a new panel:
   • ISPmanager imports Plesk backups (“Administration → Import user”), and also offers migration services performed by their engineers;
   • HestiaCP has a built-in import only for cPanel backups; FASTPANEL — we did not find Plesk backup import — files, database dumps and mail are migrated manually;
   • sites on Windows (ASP.NET, IIS, MS SQL) are not supported by the panels listed — for them you need a Windows server with IIS without a control panel or another Windows panel.
4. Certificates. Let’s Encrypt certificates are reissued on the new server.
5. Check and switch DNS — after checking the site via the hosts file.

Manual site migration step by step is described in the article /ru/devops/031/.

Who Plesk is suitable for now

Outside Russia, Plesk is chosen when you need sites on both Windows and Linux in one panel, deployment from Git, Docker and WP Toolkit for a web studio that manages dozens of WordPress sites. For a server in Russia, Plesk, like cPanel, should not be chosen: you cannot officially pay for or renew the license.