Plesk to cPanel Migration if you *don't* have SSH access

[eugenevdm.host]

Hi there,

It appears the WHM transfer tool is Plesk compatible. However, the WHM transfer tool relies on SSH which most shared hosts won't allow or open.

Can you tell me is there a way to do a Plesk migration if I don't have SSH to the source host?

 

[cPRex]

Hey there! There isn't a way to use the automated Transfer Tool system without SSH. You'd need to manually move the data, and we do have a guide to performing this work here:

How to Manually Migrate Accounts to cPanel & WHM from Unsupported Control Panels | cPanel & WHM Documentation

This document describes how to migrate your web accounts from unsupported third-party control panels to cPanel & WHM.

docs.cpanel.net

Although the title is "unsupported" control panels, many of the details will still apply to a Plesk system with limited access.

 

[eugenevdm.host]

Hi @cPRex, and thanks so much for the reply.

The article you post is somewhat useful and now leads to a new set of questions and two comments.

First comment:

- The article fails to mention IMAPSYNC. The article seems mostly focused on raw file based migrations which is useful, but nevertheless, what if it's a foreign format?

***

- Does anyone in the community know if Plesk uses Mbox or Maildir format, and if actually copying these directories across will mean the users will "just show" in WHM?
- Any idea what to do with passwords? Does Plesk encryption match WHM encryption? Surely it must, if the Transfer Tool with SSH works. But how to copy those? We have 100 mailboxes to migrate and asking our client to share 100 passwords for IMAPSYNC sounds a little bit unprofessional.

***

Last comment:

I find it slightly ironic that WHM doesn't have a better Plesk import, since both are owned by the same parent? Or maybe I'm missing something?

 

[cPRex]

IMAPSYNC is a great tool, but it's not something that's made by cPanel so we don't talk about it there. We do have a support article about it here:

https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/360052173633-How-To-Sync-IMAP-Mailboxes-Using-Imapsync

I would expect most Plesk Linux machines to be using maildir.

Most everything in Plesk is stored in the PSA database. If you search, there are instructions on how to pull any piece of information from that database you want, including the passwords.

Our Plesk import tool works well, *if* you have root access on both machines. Without root, you're limited to tools assigned to the specific user, so the options are more limited to make an automatic import tool.

 

[eugenevdm.host]

Just had a thought - get a trial license from Plesk, install it on server with root, migrate the site, then migrate to WHM.

 

[cPRex]

That would work too!