Install Softaculous on Plesk: extension, license, permissions

Softaculous on Plesk is a 20-minute job, and about 15 of those minutes are prerequisites. The extension itself installs from the Extensions Catalog in two clicks; what trips people up is the ionCube requirement on the shell installer, and the fact that Plesk hides the extension from customers until you say otherwise in Service Plans.

This covers the install on Plesk Obsidian, license activation with the correct CLI paths (they are not the cPanel ones), the permissions step, and how Softaculous divides work with Plesk's own WordPress Toolkit. If you run cPanel too, the parallel guide is installing Softaculous on cPanel — same product, different paths and different defaults.

Before you start

• Plesk Obsidian with an admin login. Fresh box? Start with installing Plesk on AlmaLinux 9.
• Root SSH, if you plan to use the shell installer or the CLI license refresh.
• Outbound TCP 443 to *.softaculous.com. That's the only network requirement — Softaculous verifies over plain HTTPS, unlike cPanel's 2089.
• A Softaculous Premium license — activate one for the matching server class. It pins to the server's public IPv4, same as every other license in the stack.

Nothing here restarts Apache, nginx, or the Plesk panel. Existing subscriptions keep serving traffic throughout.

Step 1 — Install the extension

The supported route on Obsidian is the catalogue. In Plesk go to Extensions → Extensions Catalog, search for Softaculous Auto Installer, and click Install. It takes two to three minutes; the script packages themselves download in the background afterwards, so the catalogue can look thin for the first ten minutes.

To do it from the shell instead:

wget -O install.sh https://files.softaculous.com/install.sh
chmod 755 install.sh
./install.sh

Add --quick to return the prompt immediately and let the script packages fetch in the background:

./install.sh --quick

Behind a proxy, pass it explicitly:

./install.sh proxy proxy_ip=10.0.0.5:3128 proxy_auth=user:secret

Verify either way:

plesk bin extension --list

On Plesk, Softaculous lands in /usr/local/softaculous/ — not the cPanel path under whostmgr. Every command below assumes that directory.

Step 2 — Activate the license

Open Extensions → My Extensions → Softaculous Auto Installer. The first admin page load activates the license automatically when the IP on file matches the server. Check what the licensing side actually sees:

curl -s https://www.softaculous.com/ip

If that doesn't match the IP on your license, fix it in your reseller portal — through us that's about a minute — and then force a refresh rather than waiting for the four-hourly cron:

/usr/local/softaculous/bin/php -d open_basedir="" -d disable_functions="" \
  /usr/local/softaculous/cli.php --refresh-license

A successful run prints the refreshed license details and expiry. Copying the cPanel command here is the single most common mistake — /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi/softaculous/cli.php does not exist on a Plesk box. If the refresh throws a license error rather than a path error, work through Softaculous license file not found.

Step 3 — Decide which plans see it

This is the step people skip, and then wonder why customers can't find the installer — or why customers they never meant to give it to can.

Go to Service Plans → (plan) → Permissions and set the Softaculous permission per plan, then Update & Sync to push it to existing subscriptions. Two rules worth applying:

• Customers only see the Softaculous tile if the plan also grants Create and manage sites. A missing installer icon is usually this, not a broken extension.
• Resellers inherit from their own plan. If you sell wholesale, set it deliberately — see Plesk reseller accounts and plans for how the inheritance actually resolves.

Subscription users then reach it from Websites & Domains on the domain they're working on, not from a server-wide menu.

Step 4 — Trim the catalogue and set the upgrade policy

Softaculous enables its full catalogue by default. On a customer-facing box that's a support liability: most of the long tail is abandoned software your customers will install once and open a ticket about later. In the Softaculous admin, disable everything outside the handful your signup flow actually promises — WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop or OpenCart if you sell e-commerce, Moodle if you sell to education.

Then set auto-upgrade conservatively: core minor releases on, major core off, plugins and themes off, backup-before-upgrade on with rotation capped. The reasoning and the full settings matrix are in Softaculous auto-upgrades and backups — the policy is identical on Plesk, only the menu path differs.

Softaculous vs Plesk WordPress Toolkit

Plesk ships WordPress Toolkit free on Web Pro and Web Host, so unlike on cPanel you already have a competent WordPress installer before Softaculous arrives. Buying Softaculous for WordPress alone is not a good trade on Plesk.

The honest split: keep WordPress Toolkit as the WordPress path and add Softaculous for everything else your customers ask for. Running both on the same server is fine and common — they don't fight, though a WordPress site installed by one is only fully managed by that one. For the deeper Toolkit comparison, see WordPress Toolkit on cPanel vs Plesk.

Troubleshooting

Extension installs but won't open. The catalogue install occasionally half-lands after a Plesk upgrade, leaving a tile that errors on click. Reinstall over the top — from the catalogue, or by re-running install.sh, both of which are idempotent — then reload the panel.

"ionCube Loader is not loaded". Shell installer only, see the callout above.

License not recognised after a server move. The license follows the public IPv4. Update the IP, then run the --refresh-license command in step 2. The same IP-pinning logic covers every product in the stack, which is why checking license status from the command line is worth having in your runbook.

Customers can't see the installer. Service plan permissions, or the missing Create and manage sites permission. Step 3.

Support routing. Plesk treats Softaculous as a third-party extension: bugs in the installer go to Softaculous, not to Plesk support. Budget for that when you decide who owns the escalation path.

Next steps

• Softaculous licenses explained: VPS vs dedicated pricing — which SKU your Plesk box needs, with a worked fleet example.
• Softaculous auto-upgrades and backups — the upgrade policy that keeps Monday mornings quiet.
• Plesk license tiers explained — whether Web Pro or Web Host is the right base for the plans you're selling, or check pricing for the whole stack.