Plesk is commercial web hosting and server data center automation software developed for Linux and Windows-based retail hosting service providers.

It was developed by Plesk International GmbH, a company with headquarters in Toronto, Canada, and Schaffhausen, Switzerland, with offices in Barcelona, Spain, Cologne, Germany, Tokyo, Japan, and in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, Russia, where it was created in 2000 by Dimitri Simonenko.

The hosting automation software was initially released by Plesk Inc. and first went live in 2001. In 2003, Plesk was sold to SWSoft, which became Parallels in 2008. In March 2015, Parallels renamed the service provider division to Odin. In December of the same year, Plesk became a separate business entity. In 2017, British Oakley Capital Limited acquired Plesk and it has since been a part of WebPros, a global SaaS platform for server management. Currently, WebPros comprises Plesk, cPanel, WHMCS, XOVI, and SolusVM.

Licenses

Plesk, with latest version Obsidian 18.x, is available in the following license configurations:

• Plesk Web Admin Edition: 10 domains.

• Plesk Web Pro Edition: 30 domains. It also includes Plesk WordPress Toolkit full-featured.

• Plesk Web Host Edition: Unlimited domains. The administrator can also create additional reseller accounts.

The license price also distinguishes whether a license can be used for a dedicated server or a virtualized server. Licenses for dedicated servers are usually slightly more expensive.

Criticisms

One criticism of Plesk is that the recommended method of removing it is a complete reinstall of the OS after backing up, which complicates the concept of trialware by binding an administrator to the product by facing considerable downtime of a server.

Version history

Timeline

See also

• cPanel

• Web hosting control panel

• Comparison of web hosting control panels

References