There’s a long, juicy list of events and accomplishments we had at Plesk this year. As we reflect on our Plesk 2019 highlights, we can learn and plan for an even better 2020. So let’s have a look at some of the proudest moments we had in 2019, before we start the new year.
Obsidian Launch:
Preview and General Release
Perhaps our main achievement this year was the successful launch and rolling out of updates to Plesk Obsidian. In the weeks leading up to the release date, September 25th, we invited users to try a Plesk Obsidian Preview and some of the unique features we were introducing. The Onyx to Obsidian transformation involved a heightened user experience, new security and monitoring tools and an optimized webstack to streamline the web project lifecycle.
A newer release candidate of Obsidian was frequently released until our launch. Finally, we had our most powerful management platform yet. Improved usability, tougher security and max productivity thanks to all the enhancements, new features and extensions of Obsidian. With the release, came the beginning of a short releases era – Plesk Obsidian auto-updates.
From Plesk Obsidian 18.0 onwards, the previous release tiers: Early adopters, General release and Later adopter release – became obsolete for partners. This was for multiple reasons, among which were security, speed and regularity of updates. By January 2020, we hope to have all servers auto-updated from 17.8 to 18.0. Plesk Obsidian was fully released in October 2019 with overwhelming success.
WP Toolkit
Updates from 3.5 to 4.4
The WP Toolkit 3.5 in February was a big one because it included eight hot security fixes and a new installation experience. In March, we rolled out a major update in WP Toolkit 4.0 – Remote management [demo included]. You gave excellent feedback so we could improve and in June, we released WP Toolkit 4.1 with a remote management plugin. The later WP Toolkit 4.3 in September was all about Smart Updates premium – Namely better user experience, checks and usability features. The final release of the year was a double-whammy – WP Toolkit 4.3.5 (Plesk Onyx 17.0 and 17.5) and 4.4.0 (Plesk Onyx 17.8 and Obsidian 18.0). In WP Toolkit 4.4, we focused on further UI and settings changes, set installations, action notifications. Stay tuned for our next big release early in 2020 where we’ll have the first prototype of WP Toolkit for cPanel!
New Extension Partners and
Hyperscaler Opportunities
At the start of the year, we added NextCloud – a self-hosted file-share and communication platform, to our Beta extensions catalog. Since partnering with Acronis in 2018, we saw them move forward with their latest Acronis features and key findings in Q2. Then in April, we had the birth of CLI command – WPchk – A WordPress Security checker tool for Linux servers.
Further on the security front, we partnered with Cloudbric in October, who provide advanced WAF and DDoS Protection as an extension. This year, Kolab have made two additions to their top groupware product. The first was the Seafile extension integrated into Plesk Premium Email – a file cloud where you can share libraries, directories and files with others. The second Premium Email integration was Anti-spam using Dovecot, SpamAssassin and its Bayes algorithms.
Meanwhile, on the Plesk hyperscale front, both Linode and DigitalOcean became 1-click apps in the Marketplace.
We’ve also relaunched three new CloudLinux extensions in the Imunify360 Products family designed to help you automate server protection: Imunify AV, Imunify QuickPatch and Imunify360.
Plesk and our VR Traveled Across Continents
You can check out what our Plesk VR looks like here.
Plesk was a key sponsor for the biggest hosting and cloud event of the year back in march – Cloudfest. Our team, including Plesk CTO Jan, gave compelling keynotes on WordPress hosting and such. Plus workshops about how Plesk can help one adapt to new tech changes in the industry. Meanwhile, over at our booth, our Plesk Virtual Reality Experience made its debut. Giving attendees a real feel of Plesk and what it does – let’s just say the lines were long for that one.
In June, we took the VR to WordCamp Europe in Berlin. Here, we were able to have some meaningful conversations with the community and gain insights on their WordPress installations. WCEU 2019 was also our chance to help 1&1 IONOS launch their new WP Pro offering in front of 2,700 WordPress lovers. You too can do this by co-sponsoring a WordPress event with us, so get in touch!
At WordCamp US in November, we launched a joint welcome offer for Plesk on DigitalOcean. It’s valid until December 31, so hurry and get yours to start off with a Plesk discount and free DigitalOcean credits. We were also there as a sponsor and had plenty of giveaways alongside our VR experience. We also had the opportunity to offer live coverage on talks on automated WP testing, managing WP multisite and more. Tell us in the comments if this was useful and if you want more of this in future events!
Successful Plesk Customers Among Plesk 2019 Highlights
This year, more than a few customers came forward with their success using Plesk. EverData use Plesk to manage their technical issues. And over 70% of their customers love the product because of its ease of use.
Michael Schinzel, Managing Director of Ip-Projects in Germany, used to be skeptical but is now a direct Plesk customer. Because of direct solutions to critical issues and free support. Lincoln Islam said Coderex doubled productivity since using Plesk.
Kahl Orr from Rise.co said he wouldn’t have the half-million-dollar revenue, high-quality sites and satisfied customers he has now without Plesk. He says Rise.co became more productive and efficient at managing sites. Meanwhile Marcus Karmer from German company – HostPress, attributes becoming a leading managed WordPress company to Plesk.
DuetSoft grew profits by 25% by using Plesk on DigitalOcean. Milosz from managed to start giving more time to his clients, thanks to Plesk’s time-saving features. He also cut costs and stress while gaining a market advantage. Share with us what Plesk has helped your company do in the comments!
My Plesk Self-Care Portal Beta Launch
During the Summer, we were able to announce the first launch of My Plesk – personal self-care portal. Now Plesk Online Store/Retail customers can manage all their Plesk licenses and online store purchases from one place. You can manage your licenses, subscription, edit profile details, find your activation key, even renew or upgrade your Plesk.
If you haven’t already, you can sign up for My Plesk for free. Just by using the same email you used to buy Plesk licenses and extensions. We are still open to feedback about My Plesk beta and there will be more updates in 2020 – stay tuned!
Plesk Educational Resources Took a Leap Forward
Plesk has been on Udemy since October 2019 with five free Plesk Udemy courses to date. So far we’ve had +10,000 students taking courses for using Plesk on major providers: DigitalOcean, Linode, Hetzner, GoogleCloud and Amazon Lightsail – And almost 300 positive reviews – this couldn’t make us happier.
The courses cover how to set up your own cloud server with Plesk. Then how to deploy or move a website (WordPress or otherwise) across the major cloud provider of choice. Meanwhile, there have been over 380 certified users in 2019 thanks to our free Plesk University courses. Following Obsidian, we had certification upgrades to reflect the training. So go ahead and learn something new – for free – before the year is up.
The Top APAC Partner Event in Singapore
The “partner event of the year” – Plesk APAC Partner Day 2019, was our partners’ chance to meet peers and Plesk experts. In light of the (then) newly-released Plesk Obsidian, our insiders went over to share what was new and what was coming next.
Among whom was Plesk CEO – Nils Hueneke, who spoke about the evolution of Plesk, Markus Galler, VP of Sales, and Plesk CTO, Jan Loeffler. Plesk engineers even gave a look behind the scenes of the Plesk Obsidian development. This release, along with some WordPress Community insights, allowed us to discuss tips on how partners could tune their existing infrastructure into value-added services.
Plesk 2019 Highlights: Smashing Major Milestones Together
We’re also excited to launch our brand new Virtual Private Server Management Platform, SolusIO. You can become a DigitalOcean-style VPS hoster too with this turnkey VPS solution.
Our platform has had a lot of reach – however this year we’ve hit new records. In May 2019, Plesk-powered mailboxes exceeded the 16 million mark. As of October 2019, Plesk was running on over 400,000 servers – up 20k servers from last year. And for the first time, we had over 1.4 million WP Toolkit instances installed.
This growth gives us every confidence that our solutions are useful and that partnering with Plesk makes sense as we go into 2020. Aside from the Plesk 2019 highlights, we want to mention the strong support we get from our customers every day. Your feedback and trust allows us to improve and keep doing what we do. We would have never achieved so much without you.
These accomplishments are not a brag but a reminder not to underestimate how much is possible in a year.
Tell us below – what have you achieved this year?
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4 Comments
I’m not surprised at all that Plesk made all these things in one YEAR!
You’re doing very well and the services is really valuable, Plesk made server management a piece of cake!
Thank you very much guys.. 🙂
Thanks so much for your support Noah!
Seems that 2020 should be even better. So many businesses getting into Cloud and growing SaaS market. Hosting and related services have great space to expand even more
yes, i think it would better at 2020