Add a Domain & Subscription in Plesk

In Plesk, a subscription is the hosting container — it has its own system user, disk quota, and resource limits. Domains live inside subscriptions.

Add a domain as a new subscription

1. Log into Plesk and go to Websites & Domains → Add Domain.
2. Select Create a new subscription.
3. Enter the domain name (e.g. yourdomain.com).
4. Set a System username — Plesk creates a dedicated Linux user for file isolation.
5. Set a System password — used for FTP and SSH access to the subscription.
6. Select a Hosting plan — this sets disk, bandwidth, and feature limits.
7. Click OK.

Plesk creates the document root at /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs, configures Apache/nginx, and creates the DNS zone automatically.

Add a domain to an existing subscription

If you want a second domain inside the same subscription (same disk quota and system user):

1. Open the subscription → Websites & Domains → Add Domain
2. Select Add to existing subscription
3. Choose the subscription
4. Enter the domain name
5. Click OK

The new domain gets its own document root inside the subscription.

Subdomain setup

1. Open the subscription → Websites & Domains → Add Subdomain
2. Enter the subdomain name (e.g. blog for blog.yourdomain.com)
3. Set the document root (default is httpdocs/blog)
4. Click OK

Give a client access to their domain

1. Go to Customers → Add New Customer.
2. Fill in name, email, and password.
3. Under Access to Plesk, the customer will get their own login that shows only their subscriptions.
4. Assign the domain subscription to this customer: click the subscription → Change Subscriber → select the customer.
5. The customer receives a login invitation email.

Verify the domain is working

After setup, confirm the virtual host is active:

# Check Apache/nginx config
plesk bin site --info yourdomain.com

# Test the document root
ls /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/

Upload a test file and visit http://YOUR_SERVER_IP with the correct Host header, or wait for DNS to propagate and visit https://yourdomain.com.

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Preview before DNS change

To test the site before pointing DNS, see the Preview without DNS change guide.