Plesk for Ubuntu - WordPress & Website Hosting Environment

What do you like best about the product?

For any type of user, first priority is user friendly interface and dashboard, every option is clear with proper names and one don't have to be a experience, its very easy and saves my time. Adding multiple websites with even their sub-domain makes the work easy, easy to make and configure sub domains, while creating a website or sub domain, it automatically configure the required setting and it also creates proper space for that particular website or domain, Even database management is very easy, having clear options to find the domain or the database makes it time saving. All the services like website management, database management or it might be database management or backup, single panel comes with multiple options which makes developers work easy. Free ssl certificate also is also a good service. Installing and configuring ssl is very easy, specially let's encrypt ssl. I haven't used backup option much but it gives user right to keep a backup and if required same can be extracted during required time. Dashboard has direct option to configure server mails, this also helps a lot, one of the important service which user needs. No doubt about configuration and security, its trusted platform and even support is also very good for plesk, it provides server logs which helps to find the issue or unwanted things done. Its very much developer friendly, provides access to everything which is required, ftp part also works very good, making an ftp or resetting password for one, its very much easy to operate.

What do you dislike about the product?

Auto session out even if i m working irritates me, if i m inactive for a while and it logs out, then its understood but when i m working live, then also it auto logs out, sometimes this happens inbetween code editing, if proper backup is not there, again i have to make the changes, this is a huge disadvantage. Server logs can have more filters, its not smooth, it should give user more rights and filters, there are some restrictions. Logs are not required on daily basis but when its required, getting required logs by date and time increase my headache, This things needs more attention. One more thing which i dislike is, when ever i m creating a domain or subdomain, it should ask me at the same time that do i need to install the SSL or not, additionally i have to go to domain and install the ssl certificate, this is extra work i feel, it should ask while configuring the domain. There should be an Plesk lite version which only targets website hosting and domain, since Plesk is expensive, if it can have a lite version cost can be reduce. Not every hosting requires soo many options, it should allow user to opt some and accordingly they should charge, this will increase more customers on Plesk and many others can afford it. File manager is good but it needs to be improved, sometimes i feel like its very old designed, no doubt it solves all the purpose but as time is changing it should also change. Plesk panel code editor also needs some improvement, it should be more user friendly, if a user is paying this amount, he will expect the basic things in the panel which makes his work easy.

What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?

Biggest benefit for me its convenience, easy and simple to use, no complex work required. Moreover plesk reduce the manual work which developer have to do while configuring a website or sub domain, DNS and all, it saves a lot of time, it dosent always require a developer to handle the panel, its very wasy and moreover hundereds of tuitorials are available. Wordpress also i like in plesk, easy installation, i have worked on 1-2 websites, plesk runs them very smoothly. Instead of calling hosting providers again and again, since i have plesk admin access, i can do required changes whenever i want,it gives me freedom to work openly. Let's Encrypt SSL also helps a lot, not every website requires a paid ssl, plesk provides unlimited free ssl which indirectly saves clients money. As mentioned earlier, Handling Hosting, Domains,sub domains, databases,mails etc at a single platform makes my work very. Easy to handle all the required things in a single panel. Overall, it gives me a more structured and a reliable way to manage the hosting infrastructure and multiple websites at same time. It also starts giving warning about expiry of domains in advance, highlighting the domains are about to expire and giving mails when storage reaches critical level helps to overcome many problems.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

To enhance user experience, consider implementing a more flexible session timeout feature that recognizes active work. Additionally, integrating SSL installation prompts during domain setup could streamline processes. Offering a 'Plesk Lite' version with essential features at a reduced cost might attract more users. Updating the file manager and code editor to reflect modern design standards could further improve usability.

My main use case for Plesk is to manage customers, their domains, websites, and WordPress.

A quick, specific example of how I used Plesk for managing customer domains or websites is that it has very good features which allow me to add domain names and use the name servers where we can manage all the records, A record, WWW record, CNAME record, or TXT records in Plesk only. The website files can also be viewed on the file explorer. These features help me manage domains and websites.

The best features Plesk offers include the WordPress Toolkit, domain management, and Spam Assassin for emails. Email boxes on Plesk are also very good features.

My experience with the WordPress Toolkit stands out because we can clone the websites with a one-click option which helps us go to staging, and then we can work on the staging environment. This was very valuable for WordPress customers.

It has many features. It is not limited to these, but the top features also include controlling Apache modules, PHP configuration, and PHP version.

Plesk impacts my organization positively by helping to manage multiple websites on a single platform, providing Plesk licenses to customers so they can automate their operations on their end, and allowing us to troubleshoot it for them. I have also troubleshot Plesk installation on Linux machines and Windows machines.

Managing multiple websites on a single platform helped my team by allowing us not to go to different portals to make changes in the files. We can manage multiple domains and websites under a single panel and access file explorer from the same panel for multiple websites and make changes. These are a few things which Plesk automates, and we can also provide multiple user accesses to Plesk.

Plesk does not need improvement at the moment, as they are always working on improvements and every new feature is great. They implement features and work on customer feedback, so Plesk is excellent.

I have been working in my current field for five or more years.

Plesk is stable; until your environment is infected, Plesk is pretty stable.

Plesk's scalability in terms of resource requirements is that it does not work on resource-level scalability until you have the supplied resources. It needs to handle website serving and everything, which is pretty good, and you need to scale the underlying environment, not Plesk. In terms of licensing, it is pretty scalable with licensing options.

The customer support for Plesk is awesome; they are great and very knowledgeable people. I would rate the customer support a ten out of ten.

I did not previously use a different solution, as I am not the decider of switching solutions; I am a troubleshooter.

My experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing is that licensing is pretty easy. You can go to the Plesk website, and it is also available for enterprise and individual use. The setup cost is minimal; you just need to buy the license, deploy the packages on a Linux machine, and use the license on that. It is also scalable for clients, allowing for license upgrades. I did not work on costs, but I know how the licensing module works.

I have seen a return on investment because one of my organizations deployed it on very big servers and automated websites on Plesk. When they purchase an enterprise-level license, they get unlimited hosting domains and websites, which is a pretty good return on investment.

My organization did not evaluate other options before choosing Plesk. They have other products in their portfolio, including cPanel, which is the same company's product, and both were deployed according to customer requirements.

Plesk is deployed in my organization mainly on Linux machines. I do not know about the specific cloud customers used, but they may have been on public cloud or hybrid cloud, and it can be deployed on both Linux and Windows.

The cloud provider I use most often with Plesk is usually AWS, but customers also use GoDaddy web hosting which already has Plesk.

My advice for those looking into using Plesk is that they should do some Plesk certifications. They have a university where they can learn about things because the workaround is a little complex, and they need to have knowledge about it.

My company has a business relationship with this vendor as a customer, and one of the organizations was also a reseller who used to resell the licenses, but I am not sure how it works since I do not work with licensing; I only work with troubleshooting issues.

Plesk is excellent; the creators of this software on PHP did a great job. The availability of features is awesome, and the platform UI is great. I have given this review an overall rating of ten out of ten.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

My main use case for Plesk is typically for servers for web hosting with multi-domain setup, sometimes for multiple organizations.

A specific example of how I used Plesk for web hosting or multi-domain setups involves having multiple domains with multiple owners. Each owner was able to use Plesk panel for maintaining their own domain hosted on the server. They had their own credentials and user permissions which did not interact with any other users inside the system.

Everything I mentioned before covers how I use Plesk.

In my experience, the best features Plesk offers are domain and user separations with strict quota and a great level of configurations for each client.

The valuable aspect is that Plesk provides everything in one panel. It includes backups and whatever you would want to have; you are able to configure it. It includes mailing systems, mass mailing systems, websites, SSL termination, different redirects, even different databases and language engines. Plesk is great and easy to use.

Plesk has positively impacted my organization by speeding up the release process dramatically and giving clients a level of confidence and independence from the engineering team. This has freed up a lot of time for the engineering team. Plesk maintains a lot of system operations such as system updates, language updates, and keeping different frameworks up to date, which has dramatically improved the business flow and system administration flow.

I have no additional feedback about the features; I believe I have covered everything. There are no improvements needed for Plesk that I have not mentioned yet; nothing comes to mind.

I have been using Plesk for approximately five years.

In my experience, Plesk is stable with no downtime or reliability issues.

Plesk's scalability is good; I did not face any limitation from Plesk. The limitation I experienced was resource allocation-related, which is not related to Plesk, so I would say it handles growth well.

Before Plesk, I used Webmin and cPanel, but I switched to Plesk because it looks more solid, is more feature-embedded, and is easier to understand and maintain.

I have seen a return on investment; a lot of engineering time is saved, and it sped up the process to release and create an infrastructure for clients. Plesk dramatically improves the timeline from days to a few hours.

I evaluated cPanel before choosing Plesk.

My advice to others looking into using Plesk is to create an MVP with it, install it somewhere, play with it, and look at the features to compare what is required for your project and how Plesk can solve your technical tasks. I would rate Plesk a 9 out of 10.

Hybrid Cloud

Amazon Web Services (AWS)