Reading all of this saddens me as I just started using this platform.
Now I wonder if I made a mistake. lol
I mean, what is another alternative? Open source or otherwise?
Hi fvs047, as you can see there are different voices here. I partly agree with the comment from
@Bitpalast but I really think the question depends on what your needs are. So I want to give you some insights in the experience that I've made in the last years and how I see the things. And yes, this is a personal experience, I don't want to talk negative or positive but super neutral.
Plesk is a Hosting Management Panel, making System Administrator's live easier. This means, that Plesk is a piece of software that will generate configuration for other tools. This means, that it can help saving your time, but it will not replace a system administrator. You will need knowledge about system administration, especially about hardening as Plesk won't take care about it. E.g. is firewalling: Plesk gives you an interface to manage your iptables rules, but it is your job to maintain/activate/understand the rules.
Now coming to Plesk and/or it's competitors, independent whether they are Open Source, cheaper, more expensive, whatever. I personally think, that a monthly license fee of ~ € 40,- for a unlimited license is fair for a server. If you have plenty of servers, like we have, this might drive the price up, right? So suddenly cost saving thoughts might come up to the table. E.g. a 10% increase is not much, but if you e.g. have license costs for € 4.000,- the € 400,- might hurt you. But this is not a problem only to Plesk, it's the same with e.g. Microsoft. We have a lot of customers migrating out of Microsoft 365, because the total license fees are not payable by them anymore.
Now, I want to give you a very personal insight, why for example I was complaining here:
- Hosting is not our main business, but we host a few thousand domains. Most customers use old technology, because they are not willing to adopt solutions because they work. This leads us into the situation, that 50-70% of our customers use PHP 5.3 (or older!)
Is it a bad situation? Yes!
Can we force the customer to change? No!
So what should we do, if we see no light to migrate? We can't do anything except closing down the business.
- 3% of our customers use the self service platform = login to plesk and maintain it. Most of them are not interested.
It is the same with WordPress: Out of 700 WordPress installations, only 3 (!) people used their login in the last 2 years.
- We do not sell anything like subdomains etc; it is always 1 domain = 1 hosting package = 1 account!
So for us, everything that Plesk does, is creating Apache/Nginx configuration, creating mailserver configuration and MySQL configuration. Honestly said, for generating 3-4 configuration files, the solution is just an overshoot. We ignored it, because it was a nice-to-have that was effordable; but we are not willing to pay e.g. € 500,- per server to do so, as we can also handle it easily via Bash Scripts.
In regards to Support I can tell you, that the Support Team as well as the community admins always did a great job and there is nothing I can complain. In case you get a little bit bigger, the situation becomes strange. We tried several times to achieve an partner status, at least to discuss the situation without any luck. The only feedback we got is, that no new partners are accepted, and that new license changes will come soon.
The big bad point is, that it is simply not possible anymore to plan the future with Plesk. We are required to make contracts with our customers over 3-4 years. Yes, some guys might now say, that this is stupid, but we have for example also "officials" (e.g. schools) as customers and the government requires them to do a long-term contract with best price guarantee. Now for domains this is easy, we just immediatly add the years to it. But how should we handle Plesk inceases? And yes, we had strange topics here: We consume our licenses through 4-5 different partners, some of them are smaller, some of them are most likely some of the biggest ones. And the situation is crazy: E.g. one kicked all licenses simply out, referring to Plesks changes. Another partner just started to increase the license. And then the strange things come: Out of 10 licenses we have in total 7 different prices.
But again, this is not complaining. Plesk is a great tool, until you use it. We don't use the features because our customers are simply not interested. And the mass hosting market is down: We don't want to, and honestly we are not able to go into a competition where 400GB HA-webspace, 8GB dedicated RAM and 6 dedicated vCUPs including unlimited domains and Plesk cost you € 15,- total a month.
So, long story short: Give it a try, make use of all the features & benefits and enjoy Plesk. It's for sure the best solution if you compare it in regards it to features.
Facebook
Twitter
