A free Plesk alternative: migrate off Plesk to Jabali Panel on Debian 13

If you run a Plesk fleet — even a small one — the licence bill grows in ways cPanel operators recognise: per-server minimums, per-domain tiers, extensions that ratchet up the total. And unlike cPanel, Plesk’s cheaper editions cap the number of domains you can host, so growth means an unplanned upgrade.

Jabali Panel is an AGPL-licenced open-source hosting control panel with the same feature surface Plesk covers — domains, PHP-FPM, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, mail, DNS, WordPress, one-click app installs — and no per-server / per-domain fee. This post explains the case for leaving Plesk and walks through the SSH-pull migration end-to-end.

The economics: why the licence bill hurts

Plesk Web Host Edition (the tier hosting providers reach for) is billed per server, and the domain limit varies by tier. Retail:

• Web Admin: 10 domains
• Web Pro: 30 domains
• Web Host: unlimited domains

Add the extensions most Plesk admins actually use (Kaspersky Anti-Virus, JetBackup, WP Toolkit for developers) and a single production server is comfortably into three figures per year. Multiply across a fleet.

Jabali Panel is AGPL — free forever, unlimited domains, unlimited mailboxes, unlimited databases, no premium tiers, no feature-flag paywalls. The Docker Apps marketplace covers the JetBackup / catalog-installer feature slot; Jabali Cache covers the WP-Toolkit performance slot; AppSec + CrowdSec cover the ModSecurity / Fail2Ban slot.

Same platform surface, no lock-in

Plesk feature	Jabali Panel equivalent
Domain management	Domains + subdomains + aliases
PHP-FPM per domain	Per-domain PHP version + settings
MariaDB / MySQL	MariaDB 11 (default) or MySQL 8
PostgreSQL	Panel-managed Postgres
Mail: SMTP, IMAP, POP3, spam	Stalwart 0.16 — SMTP, IMAP, JMAP, DKIM, MTA-STS
DNS	PowerDNS with per-zone editor
WP Toolkit	First-class WordPress + Jabali Cache
Node.js extension	Panel-native Node.js runtimes
Docker extension	Docker Apps marketplace, 64+ curated stacks
JetBackup / built-in backups	Restic-based backups with per-destination targets
ModSecurity	AppSec
Fail2Ban	CrowdSec with Console community blocklists
Let’s Encrypt	Certbot pipeline, per-domain toggle
Customer / service plans	Panel users + Hosting Packages

How the SSH-pull migration works

Unlike cPanel / DirectAdmin / HestiaCP — where you produce an archive on the source and upload it — the Plesk pipeline is live pull-based. You register the source Plesk host in /jabali-admin/migrations with its SSH endpoint and credentials; the panel does the rest.

Every command the pipeline runs on the source is read-only. From internal/migrate/plesk/discover.go:

Read-only contract: every command this package shells out to is a list / info / json-export variant (--list, --info, -format json). We never run a create / delete / modify call against the source panel.

Concretely: plesk bin subscription --list, plesk bin domain --info, plesk bin database --list, plesk bin dns --info, plesk bin mail -l -json, plesk ext wp-toolkit --list -format json. No create, delete, disable, no writes to Plesk’s PSA database.

That means:

• Analyze days in advance. The source stays fully operational; you’re reading, not writing. Kick off discovery whenever, review the report at leisure.
• Freeze writes only at cutover. Down-time on the source is bounded by the actual restore window, not by “we need to snapshot”.
• No pkgacct step. No manual scripting on the source, no rsync of multi-GiB tarballs.

Walk-through: migrating one Plesk subscription

Step 1 — Register the source. In /jabali-admin/migrations, click New source and pick plesk. Enter:

• Host: plesk.example.com
• Port: 22
• Auth: SSH password or private key (base64)
• Principal: root or a sudo-capable admin

Step 2 — Discover subscriptions. The panel opens an SSH session and calls plesk bin subscription --list. The subscription list appears in the UI. Pick the one you want to migrate.

Step 3 — Assign a target Hosting Package. The pipeline reads the subscription’s Plesk service plan via plesk bin service_plan --info and suggests the closest Jabali Hosting Package by disk quota + bandwidth quota. Override if needed.

Step 4 — Analyze. The pipeline reads every domain, database, DNS zone, mailbox, and WordPress install from the source. No writes. The analyze report shows exactly what will land on the destination.

Step 5 — Restore. Click Restore. The pipeline synthesizes a cpmove-shape archive locally on the destination — files streamed over SSH, DB dumps produced via mysqldump / pg_dump over the SSH session, DNS zones translated to PowerDNS rows — and hands off to the same restore path the cPanel pipeline uses. Live per-phase progress in the UI.

Step 6 — Communicate mail passwords. The report prints the new generated passwords for each mailbox. Deliver out of band, or set the force-first-login reset flag under Server Settings.

Step 7 — Cut over DNS. Update A/AAAA/MX at the registrar. With the 300s TTL you pre-set 24-48h earlier, most of the world sees the new host within 5-10 minutes.

Step 8 — Issue SSL. Once DNS resolves, hit the per-domain SSL toggle. Certbot issues via HTTP-01 on port 80.

Total operator time: 15-30 minutes per subscription, most of it in the smoke-test between Restore and DNS repoint.

What breaks (and what to do about it)

Mailbox passwords are not portable. Plesk uses Courier / Dovecot password hash formats that Stalwart’s Argon2id store cannot ingest. The panel generates new passwords and prints them in the migration report. Mailbox content (INBOX, folders, flags) migrates intact via IMAP.

Plesk extensions don’t translate. Kaspersky Anti-Virus, JetBackup schedules, ImunifyAV rules — none of these carry over. Map them to Jabali equivalents:

• Kaspersky → CrowdSec + AppSec (WAF-level protection at the server layer)
• JetBackup → Jabali’s restic-based backup system
• ImunifyAV → CrowdSec Console + AppSec
• WP Toolkit → panel-native WordPress + Jabali Cache

Reseller structure flattens. Jabali has no reseller construct. Reseller-owned subscriptions become individual panel users. If reseller hierarchy mattered for billing, model it in FOSSBilling or your existing billing tool instead of the panel.

Plesk on Windows is not supported. The Plesk pipeline is Linux-only. Windows Plesk uses IIS / MSSQL / Exchange; Jabali is nginx / MariaDB / Stalwart. Windows Plesk migrations need per-service manual exports.

Try it before you cut over

You can point the Plesk pipeline at a source, run Analyze, and review the report without touching production DNS. Verify the domain / DB / mailbox count matches your expectation, spot-check a database restore in the destination MariaDB, then decide whether to Restore.

Full technical reference: Plesk migration docs. See also DirectAdmin migration, HestiaCP migration, and the end-to-end cPanel guide whose cutover playbook applies verbatim to Plesk.