How to move a domain between subscriptions in Plesk

This guide will show you how to transfer a domain’s hosting between subscriptions, or to a new subscription of its own, in Plesk. A few notes on this before we begin:

• This can only be done if you have a Plesk Reseller account, or if you are a Plesk administrator (with a Plesk Web Pro or Plesk Web Host license)
• If you’d like to move a domain registration between Websavers customers, please have the current owner of the domain open a ticket to make the request – this guide will not be required.

Please complete the following steps to move a domain in Plesk:

1. Begin by logging in to Plesk
2. Go to the domain you wish to move, and click on Databases. In the list of databases, it will likely show you the domain that is associated with each database – take note of the databases that are associated with the domain (and any of its subdomains) that you will be moving.
3. Follow the guide provided by Plesk here (with screenshots) to move the domain
4. While completing those steps you probably saw a checkbox that asks if you’d like to head to the Databases list after the move. They ask this question because any databases associated with the domain you’re moving will remain with the old subscription. Read on to learn how to ensure this is handled properly.

How to move a database between subscriptions

If your site is a totally static HTML site (ie: there’s no page you go to login to manage it), then you likely don’t have a database to move, and the above steps are all you needed to complete!

However if your site is powered by a content management system like WordPress, it’s important to keep the database (or databases) associated with that website in the correct subscription. After you move the domain between subscriptions the database for any websites you have on that domain do not move along with it.

In the steps above, at part (2), we asked you to take note of the databases that are associated with the domain that is moving (along with any of its subdomains). If you have that list of databases ready to go, then all you must do is:

1. Visit the source subscription where you moved the domain from, and click on Databases under any of its domains (the databases are conencted with a subscription, not a particular domain).
2. Select the first database to move, then choose the option to move the database to another subscription
3. Select the subscription where the domain was moved to and press OK.

Repeat this for each database associated with the moved domain(s).

Tips on moving databases:

A) If you do not move the databases, and leave them in the old subscription, the site will continue to work fine for now. However in the future, you might forget that these databases aren’t supposed to be there and remove them. Or you might remove the entire subscription thinking you no longer need it, forgetting that it still contains needed databases. This is why we move the databases now – to prevent future problems and keep everything organized properly.

B) If you did not take note of the databases before moving the domain, or if the databases are not associated properly with their domain (this can occur if you’ve been hosted with us a long time, prior to database-domain assocations made it to Plesk, or if you have multiple databases associated with one domain), you will need to look into the configuration files (ex: wp-config.php for WordPress) for each site you host on the domain(s) to obtain the database names. Once you have those names you can complete the steps above to move them to the new subscription.