Question How to move domain and all related parts to different user after license downgrade?

[D3nnis3n]

Server operating system version

Ubuntu 24.04

Plesk version and microupdate number

18.0.68

Hello,
due to the inacceptable plesk pricing we decided to downgrade to the lowest license type that doesn't allow clients, given we don't actually need them and had the license mostly for the server overview that for some reason isn't available on lower licenses.

Unfortunately we seemingly forgot a single domain that was still hosted under a client for convenience and which is now no longer accessible via the panel ui.
How can we move that domain to the main user, so it is accessible again? The website for some reason still works fine, but obviously no configuration changes are possible without it being listed.

 

[Martin Dias]

You can move it to the admin with:

plesk bin subscription --change-owner "example.com" -owner admin

Or you can move it to one of your admin subscriptions:

plesk bin subscription --merge source-example.com -webspace-name target-example.com

 

[D3nnis3n]

Hello @Martin Dias,
thank you, that seems to have worked, though the command closed with an error:

SUCCESS: Owner of subscription '<redacted>' was changed.
[2025-04-10 18:42:15.011] 51288:67f7f4e64535a ERR [util_exec] proc_close() failed ['/opt/psa/admin/bin/dnsmng' '--update' 'anonymizeddomain.com' '--without-reverse'] with exit code [1]

Should I be worried about that?

 

[Martin Dias]

Check the domain if the DNS works fine and if you still can do changes.
Also check /var/log/plesk/panel.log to see if there are more details about the error.

 

[D3nnis3n]

Hello,
it seems I can make changes which take effect, but there is an issue with the certificate after the subscription change.
Despite no configuration has been changed - and it later having been updated to use the same certificate as before (or rather re-saved, the same was still noted in the hosting configs), it now uses the certificate of a different domain and as such shows an SSL error when opening it.

 

[D3nnis3n]

@Martin Dias
Any idea on that? The website is still using the general server certificate (which is a different domain and as such doesnt allow access due to HSTS) for its webmail, despite I have set mail and web certificate to it's own and have regenerated it via Let's Encrypt. Webmail is no longer accessible.

 

[D3nnis3n]

I also checked /etc/apache2 and /etc/nginx webmail configs for their certificate line - the certificate listed there is the one that in the database is connected to the correct domain and would be the correct certificate. Yet, all tried web browsers claim to see a different certificate.

 

[Sebahat.hadzhi]

Have you tried clearing the cache already or testing from a completely different device? If you have reissued the SSL certificate it could be a local caching issue.

 

[D3nnis3n]

I figured it out, if someone else ever has the same issue:
The process I was advised to do for some reason reset the IP assignment, but only for IPv6, the IPv4 was still there.
As my personal network uses IPv6 as preferred, it never reached the website, but instead the base page for Plesk, which is secured with the default certificate.
I would have figured this out quicker if HSTS wasn't enabled, so that I could have seen what would actually be displayed on the page it was trying to reach.