GuideHow to migrate from Plesk to MariHost

Last updated: 26 October 2026

Some web hosts use Plesk as their control panel. If yours does, moving to MariHost is simple: you share your Plesk login with us, and we move your websites, databases and email for you, free, as part of your plan. This guide shows you how to share your login safely, what we move, and how to switch without your site going offline. Your part takes about 10 minutes.

What we move when you migrate from Plesk

From your Plesk account we make a full backup and import it into your MariHost account:

• your websites' files, including subdomains and domain aliases
• your databases
• your email accounts, their passwords and the email in them, and your forwarders
• your SSL certificates, scheduled tasks (cron jobs), FTP accounts and PHP version

We move as many websites as your plan holds, free, in your first 30 days.

Ask for your free migration

Choose a plan and start your free trial or order it: Choosing a hosting plan helps. Then open a ticket in your client area at billing.marihost.com, under Support, and ask for your free migration. Tell us your domains, and that your current host uses Plesk.

Not a customer yet, with questions first? Ask through our contact form, but don't put any passwords in it.

Share your Plesk login safely

In your ticket, send us:

• the address you use to log in to Plesk, often ending in :8443, such as yourhost.com:8443 (your current host's welcome email has it)
• your Plesk username and password

Send them only in a ticket in your client area, never by WhatsApp, email or our contact form: tickets stay inside your account. If Plesk asks for a two-factor code when you log in, tell us in the ticket, and we'll agree a time to log in together.

We log in, make a full backup of your account and import it. Your old sites stay live the whole time, so your visitors don't notice anything. We check each website works on our servers, then tell you it's ready for you to check too.

When the move is done, change your Plesk password, or cancel the old hosting once you've switched (below).

What to set up again

A few Plesk extras don't come across, so set them up again in our control panel afterwards, if you used them:

• autoresponders (set up an out-of-office reply instead)
• catch-all email addresses
• mailing lists
• calendars and contacts kept in Plesk's webmail
• password-protected folders
• custom error pages and visitor statistics

Your email addresses keep their passwords. After the switch, update the server settings in your mail apps: see IMAP and SMTP settings.

Switch to MariHost

When we've checked the copy, and you've had a look too:

1. Point your domain to MariHost, by changing its nameservers to ns1.maridns.com and ns2.maridns.com, or its DNS records. Our guide to pointing your domain to MariHost shows each step.
2. Check everything: your site loads with the padlock, your forms send, you can log in to WordPress, and your email sends and arrives.
3. Keep your old hosting for a week, then cancel it. Some networks take up to 48 hours to see the change, and it's a useful copy if anything was forgotten.

Don't add posts, products or orders on the old site after we've made the copy: they won't be on the new one. If you run a shop, agree the timing with us. Our guide to moving your site to MariHost has more on avoiding downtime and moving email.

Prefer to make the backup yourself?

If you'd rather not share your login, make a full backup in Plesk and we'll move that instead. The menus differ a little between Plesk versions and hosts:

1. In Plesk, go to Websites & Domains and open Backup Manager. In some versions it's under Account, as Back Up My Account and Websites.
2. Click Back Up. Choose a full backup, of all configuration and content, including mail, and store it on the server.
3. Plesk builds the backup in the background: a few minutes for a small site, an hour or more for a large one. It appears in the list in Backup Manager when it's done.
4. Click the backup, then Download. If Plesk offers to protect the file with a password, leave that off: we can't import a password-protected backup.

Tell us in your ticket that you have the file, and we'll reply with how to send it to us.

If something's not right

We can't log in to your Plesk. Check the address, username and password by logging in yourself. Some hosts block logins from other countries or new addresses: ask your host to allow ours, or make the backup yourself as above.

There's no Backup Manager in your Plesk, or the backup fails. Some hosts switch it off or limit its size. With your login, we can usually copy your sites another way: tell us in your ticket.

Your email stays with Google Workspace or Microsoft 365. Tell us, and we'll keep your MX records as they are, so your email keeps flowing. See Use Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 email.

Next steps

Moving from another control panel? See Move from a cPanel host or Move from a DirectAdmin host. Haven't chosen a plan yet? Choosing a hosting plan helps, and every plan starts with a free 3-day trial.