Plesk Premium Email Archives

Get Your Hands on Plesk Extensions and Toolkits This ‘HoliDeals’ Season (Part 1)

Another holiday season, another ‘HoliDeals’ sale to cheer up the mood. If you want to make optimal use of your Plesk control panel, the best way is to accommodate it with all the core components. Your website will be able to get wonderful results only if you have the right Plesk tools and services. With them, you can easily manage your web hosting at reduced operating costs which will ultimately lead to larger profits.

And because we’re in a jolly spirit, we’re glad to introduce the Plesk HoliDeals Calendar. For 24 days, starting from December 1st, 2020, you’ll get exclusive discounts on top Plesk extensions, feature packs, toolkits, and licenses to make your toolbox jingle all the way!

You’re probably familiar with our seasonal offers. But this time, we want to make your holidays even more special with our 24 days – 24 giveaways deal. So, no more talking, and let’s crack on with some real action.

Ready to reveal a sneak peek of what the Plesk HoliDeals Calendar is holding for us this season? Let’s see the first 12 extensions and discuss their major benefits and features!

#1 ImunifyAV

The first extension on offer in our HoliDeals calendar is the highly advanced antivirus and security monitoring tool ImunifyAV. It’s ideal for websites facing regular security threats. With features like blacklist status check, domain reputation monitoring, and one-click automatic malware cleanup, you can give your customers complete automated protection. We have designed this tool to instantly clear out worms, trojans, spyware, adware, and viruses.

While the free version boasts functionalities like a sophisticated malware file scanner, among other things, you get features like user and admin notifications on malware detection, scheduled website check, automatic cleanup, and authority to permission management with the premium version.

Overall, ImunifyAV can detect malicious behaviors in real-time and perform the immediate cleanup, giving your customers satisfaction.

#2 Collabora Online

Collabora Online is a LibreOffice-based online office tool designed to support all the major presentation, spreadsheet, and document file formats. The best part is that we have designed it to integrate with Plesk Premium Email powered by Kolab. This is a collaborative online office tool that allows admins to view and edit text files and documents of different formats.

It is open-source, so it can work in any modern web browser without the need for a plugin. The following are the document file formats Collabora Online support:

Presentations (.ppt, .pptx, .odp)
Spreadsheets (.xls, .xlsx, .ods)
Text Documents (.doc, .docx, .odt)

The tool can also preserve the formatting and layout of the documents if it has been sourced from any other platform.

#3 Acronis Backup

Acronis Backup is one of the upcoming extensions designed by Plesk, and we are glad to put it on your Plesk HoliDeals Calendar. It offers reliable cloud backup for web hosting servers and is packed with features like self-service recovery for web professionals. In short, you can protect the entire server and all the websites it hosts using Acronis’ image-backed backups.

It also allows for self-service and granular recovery of databases, mailboxes, individual files, and websites using the Plesk UI. With Acronis, you can offer a premium backup service to your customers where you can manage recovery features and subscriptions.

#4 Speed Kit

Plesk has designed Speed Kit to give your website a performance boost of up to 300%. It is a one-click solution that can accelerate your website, preventing any downtime.

This tool can help you increase your conversion rate as it drastically reduces the page load time, ensuring that visitors stay on your webpage for the desired purpose. With the likes of dynamic content caching, edge and client caching, image optimization, personalized content caching, and performance monitoring, all this makes the website smooth and fast.

You can also get a free performance analyzer to determine how you can boost your webpage load time. When you install Speed Kit, it will first analyze your website and then create a performance report.

#5 SEO Toolkit

Search engine optimization is highly critical for any website. A carefully optimized site will rank on top of the search engine results list. Since it is a vast field, not all SEO strategies are executed as planned. SEO Toolkit solves this issue by allowing you to design and execute your strategy, benchmark your website against competitors, and monitor your keyword ranking all from a single place.

You can make use of the Plesk HoliDeals to grab a lucrative offer on SEO Toolkit. There is a Site Audit feature that lets you analyze your website for common SEO issues. Above all, it provides you with immediate optimization solutions to keep your site properly optimized.

#6 Plesk Web Pro Edition (VPS or dedicated)

For high performance dedicated and VPS hosters, Plesk’s Web Pro Edition offers an optimal solution that meets the growing needs for customer self-administration. This tool can help you customize your business to increase profit and service offerings.

The primary benefit of installing this extension is that you can customize your service offering by selecting which applications your customers want. Also, it allows you to design and create a sophisticated website instantly and secure and manage themes, plugins, etc.

When it comes to VPS hosters, you get a premier server management tool to manage all applications and systems for hosting on a single VPS server. Dedicated hosters, on the other hand, can be deployed in minutes, providing a high-performance solution that is sophisticated yet inexpensive.

#7 WordPress Pack

You can turn your Plesk server into a user-friendly WordPress Manager with the help of WordPress Pack. We have created the WordPress Pack to give you the ability to create your own managed WordPress with features like ImunifyAV, backup to Cloud Pro, BoldGrid (a drag and drop website editor), SEO Toolkit, and WordPress Smart Updates.

This pack is what you need to manage your WordPress instances with features like NGINX caching, full WordPress security check, syncing data between WordPress instances, staging environment, and cloning existing WordPress installs.

You may find a great offer on our WordPress Pack during HoliDeals. So, stay tuned and keep visiting our site.

#8 Backup to Cloud Pro

Backup to Cloud Pro enables you to schedule Automatic Backups to your cloud storage. Whether you use Microsoft OneDrive, DigitalOcean Spaces, Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon S3, or any other popular cloud storage solutions, Backup to Cloud Pro allows you and your clients to set up different backup schedules.

It is a perfect choice for web professionals and hosting companies because it makes cloud storage a hassle-free experience.

#9 Imunify360

Imunify360 is a multi-layered and advanced web server security platform with an innovative WAF/firewall and machine learning rulesets. That means it can stop the latest attacks like port scanning, denial of service (DoS), vulnerability exploitation, and brute force attacks at both HTTP and network levels.

It is an AI-based security platform with ‘herd protection’ that leverages and aggregates threat intelligence reports. Also, we make sure that you get world-class 24/7 technical support when it comes to installing and configuring the Imunify360 extension.

#10 Plesk Email Security

Whether it is spam or cyber threats, or viruses, managing them can become tricky. Not anymore because Plesk has brought you Email Security that offers protection to your business from the neverending cyber threats and online malicious activities.

The Plesk Email Security extension is available in two versions – free and paid. In the free version, you get features like individual and server-wide anti-spam settings, configurable anti-spam filter, and email configuration checker, among other things.

In the paid version, the features get a little enhanced. You get never-before-seen functionalities like antivirus quarantine management, antivirus scanning of emails, daily updates of the antivirus database, automatic learning of spam messages, DNS blacklist management, and more.

You have the opportunity to get the paid version at a discounted rate during holidays.

#11 Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab

Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab, offers an advanced and secure groupware solution featuring notes, emails, tasks, file management, contacts, and calendars. This premium extension is ideal for users who are looking for a high level of control and privacy.

We have given it a responsive browser-based interface that makes it easy to operate on mobile devices and desktop computers.

#12 Dropsuite Website Backup

Dropsuite Website Backup is a cloud-based database, website backup, and monitoring service enabling you to securely monitor, protect, backup, and restore your databases and websites.

It uses enhanced military-grade encryption but is extremely easy to use. You will have to purchase a storage space plan before you can backup unlimited databases and websites.

Dropsuite acts as an insurance cover for your website as it backs up all the data and information automatically that is available on your website.

To be continued…

Don’t Miss a Gift!

Did you know you can add your daily reminders to your personal calendar? Or you can also subscribe now to receive fresh updates to your mailbox. Check here if you want to know more.

More ‘HoliDeals’ gifts will come out during these 24 days of December. So stay on the lookout for more surprising updates!

How Modern Secure and Self-Hosted Messaging has Become a Cornerstone for Teams Worldwide

The current pandemic has accelerated the way we work together with teams worldwide and across all industries. And for this reason, modern workplace messaging has become a common interface for people and software to collaborate.

For many years, companies of all shapes and sizes have been looking for collaboration platforms. They are aiming to drive innovation while maintaining control and security over their most sensitive data. And here’s where messaging and collaboration platforms give development teams precisely what they need. That’s a workspace that allows them to be more productive while meeting IT and security teams’ control requirements.

Solutions like Mattermost and Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab, are excellent examples of this. Read more to find out why.

Introducing the Mattermost Extension

Mattermost is an open source messaging and developer collaboration platform that meets businesses’ trust and security requirements. From piloting spacecraft and ensuring national security to building electric cars and advancing vital infrastructure – enterprises use Mattermost daily to change the world.

Benefits of Working with Mattermost

A modern enterprise collaboration platform can increase organizational agility by bringing conversations, software, and data together. Mattermost not only makes DevOps collaboration more powerful through integrations with existing tools and systems. It also automates workflow allowing continuous integration and deployment. Let’s run through all its benefits:

Privacy, security, and compliance. Mattermost lets you keep full control of your messages, data, and intellectual property. It also runs your vital communications behind your firewall, self-hosted on the cloud of your choice and under your existing security and IT policies. And you can use its auditing tools to meet compliance requirements.
Productivity and agility. Mattermost empowers development teams to build workflow, ship software faster, and collaborate confidently.
Extensibility. Through integrations with other services and internal systems, it allows increasing ROI on existing software investments.
Open Source. As an open source platform, Mattermost ensures that teams are completely free to develop additional features without any restrictions.

Mattermost for Plesk Premium Email – The Perfect Match

Many of the world’s leading high-security enterprises work better with Mattermost by connecting people, tools, and automation across tens of thousands of users. And that’s why Mattermost integrates with Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab, acting as a secure chat module for the web client. With this union, teams are not only more connected and productive – they thrive!

Mattermost is supported on Plesk 17.8 or later, installed on the following Linux distributions: CentOS 7, Debian 8 and 9, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, and Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04.

It’s also worth noting that, additionally, Mattermost has some requirements when working with Plesk. The domain must be secured with a valid SSL certificate, and NGINX must be enabled in proxy mode. Also, on CentOS 7 and RHEL 7, it’s required to install Postgres 9.4 on the system that is incompatible with the PostgreSQL component.

Unlock Your Self-Hosted Email’s Full Potential

The Mattermost extension for Plesk Premium Email serves as a secure messaging platform, allowing teams to have more excellent connectivity. And enabling security for your business and teams even when remote.

Plesk’s self-hosted online office brings people, discussions, bots, tools, and files together. This shared workspace lets groups collaborate in real-time throughout the project lifecycle. Also, Mattermost’s self-hosted approach provides modern communication benefits without sacrificing privacy, giving more control to teams. Read more best practices for running a self-hosted email server here.

On top of this, with the Plesk Email Security extension, you can also synchronize email, calendars, contacts, files, and notes on any desktop or mobile device. You can set up auto-responders or allow real-time notifications for emails. Cloud storage, including WebDAV, lets you securely access files from anywhere. And it’s easy to integrate anti-spam filters so that your mailbox stays safe from viruses and spam. Not bad – huh?

Licensing

Mattermost is included in Plesk Premium eMail in the fully featured free open source edition that you can host for yourself or your customers. If you are interested in upgrading to the Mattermost Enterprise edition, you can try it for free, or easily purchase a license key from Mattermost directly.

To compare Mattermost’s open source edition versus their enterprise edition, please refer to this page: https://mattermost.com/pricing-feature-comparison/

So, are you ready to give Plesk Premium Email and Mattermost a try? Get a detailed look into all their features here and here. Go ahead – your team is waiting!

Get Mattermost for Plesk Premium Email

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Key Reasons Why You Should Upgrade Your Email Security Today

Why is Email Security so Important?

When was the last time you checked your email security? Are your mailboxes and personal data protected enough? The unprecedented situation we’re all currently going through is affecting online businesses worldwide. And according to Cloudflare, online threats rose by six times their normal levels in the early weeks of the pandemic outbreak. Based on the 2020 Data Breaches Investigation Report by Verizon, 28% of the breach victims were small businesses. Which translates into an increasing cybersecurity risk.

Strong email security is crucial to safeguard your business and keep it running, during COVID-19 times more than ever. In this article, we’ll guide you through some ways to spot malware and how to keep your email and data secured.

Most Common Email Threats and How to Block Them

There are several reasons why you should protect your server against cyber threats. And of course, there are also many ways you can secure your self-hosted email using different security sever tools. Let’s go through the most common email threats and what we can do to block them.

Malware

Malware often accompanies spam and phishing attacks. Viruses, trojans, ransomware, and all sorts of malware use email to gain access to personal and corporate email accounts. And once they access your server, there’s not much you can do about it. Hackers use malware to steal personal information, such as sensitive data like credit cards and infect computers, to use them to mine cyber currency.

But it’s easy to block malware and stop it from damaging your server by installing effective anti-virus solutions. ImunifyAV and Kaspersky Antivirus for Servers are two power-tools that can detect any malicious file, eliminate it, and monitor and control your security.

Spam

Some might think that spam is harmless. However, that’s not even near reality as spam brings severe risks to your data and server security. For instance, email bombing is a very popular form of spam that involves sending massive amounts of messages to your address. Because if you start receiving a waterfall of emails that flood your inbox, it might cause a distraction to see the real damage. And by the time you notice something’s wrong, it might be too late to solve it.

Spam not only causes headaches when receiving but also sending. One of the most significant problems when having your account hacked is facing a bad reputation. Using solutions such as Warden Anti-spam and Virus Protection or Plesk Email Security for outbound anti-spam and anti-virus ensures that your server doesn’t send spam. And that no spammer can get access to your server, damaging your reputation.

Weak passwords

Choosing the right password can wholly become a tricky task that can end up exposing your server to all types of cyber-attacks. If the password is too simple, it will most probably be easy to guess. And if, on the contrary, the password you pick is too hard, chances are you will forget it in an instance.

Installing a multi-factor authentication such as Google Authenticator enables you to log in to your server without using passwords. Which reduces the risk of getting hacked. If you want to learn more about authentication schemes in Plesk, you can also read this blog post.

Let’s have a look at two alternatives for protecting your email hosted on Plesk – Plesk Email Security and MagicSpam.

How to Upgrade Your Email Security

At Plesk, we care about your privacy. And, therefore our goal is to prioritize your personal information and safeguard your data and business from all kinds of security threats. That’s why our tools provide targeted solutions for common security issues with little to no manual work.

For example, Plesk Email Security is our fast, complete, and budget-friendly email solution against spam and viruses. It requires no manual configuration or CLI adjustments for open-source tools, and it complements the rest of the webmail features.

Plesk Email Security is 100% compatible with Plesk, and it comes with Plesk support guaranteed at any time. And you can also install it on top of your Plesk Premium Email subscription to further protect you against malware, deflecting damage to your business.

Free version:

Configurable anti-spam filter.
Server-wide and individual anti-spam settings.
Spam score, move/mark spam, and white-/blacklist handling.
Email configuration checker (DNS records, rDNS, DNSBL)
Settings migration from built-in component & 3rd party extension (MagicSpam)

Paid version (Pro):

Anti-virus scanning of emails and quarantine management.
Daily updates of the anti-virus and anti-spam database.
Automatic learning of spam and ham messages.
Statistics overview of email traffic (ham, spam, viruses).
DNS blacklist management.

What You Need to Know About the MagicSpam Extension

MagicSpam has also been for many years one of the most used third-party extensions for email protection on Plesk. This anti-spam software installs directly on the mail server or control panel and simplifies spam protection.

However, we have an important announcement regarding the MagicSpam extension. Because, from the end of October 2020, MagicSpam will no longer be listed in the Plesk Extension Catalog. This means that MagicSpam users will still be able to use the extension on the Plesk platform but will no longer enjoy the benefits of using an official Plesk extension. That is, for instance, 100% compatibility with the Plesk platform, affordable prices, and most importantly, 24/7 support from the Plesk support team.

But there’s no reason to panic. If you are a current MagicSpam user, we recommend that you uninstall MagicSpam immediately and replace it with Plesk Email Security – our complete, fully supported, and budget-friendly extension.

Current Offers for Plesk Email Security

A good email security extension should not only protect you from spam and viruses. But also add more value to its offer and handle things you shouldn’t care about – like configuration checks, imported settings, or automatic learning from other users’ actions.

Plesk Email Security offers you that and more. Because it comes with integrated anti-spam filters and keeps your mailbox safe from viruses and spam. Plesk Email Security also provides further layers of protection with more configuration options and additional virus protection features.

With our permanent offer, you can get started with Plesk Email Security for even less money. Get it now for 12 months and pay for 10 only. Additionally, we’re currently offering six months free on Plesk Premium Email to help businesses stay safe during these unprecedented times. Find all details about this offer here.

How seriously do you take your email security? Are you a user of Plesk Email Security and would like to share your experience with us? Let us know in the comments below!

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5 Tech Updates to Boost Small Businesses During a Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has been tough for all of us, but it’s been especially difficult for small business owners. If you own a small business, not only are you dealing with pandemic effects in your personal life. But you may also be trying to figure out how to keep your business thriving. Luckily, there are some tech tools that can make it easier to survive during these uncertain times. And save you some stress in terms of your small business.

Engaging and Utilitarian Websites

Even before the COVID-19 crisis, people were searching for businesses online before making a purchase. In fact, consumers looking for information on local small businesses conduct 46 percent of online searches. With stores closed and people staying home more these days, that percentage is bound to go up.

So, if your website is below par, you could end up losing out on sales that could help your business stay afloat. If you’re not sure where to begin with website improvements, hire freelancers to help you out. Freelance job boards make it simple to connect with website developers and other freelancers that can provide the edge you need to stay competitive right now. So be sure to check these sites out.

User-Friendly E-Commerce Options

E-commerce is another business element that was popular before COVID-19 but that’s even more essential with more consumers sticking closer to home. While a basic website can help your business stay relevant, incorporating e-commerce elements into your website can help your business continue to bring in profits during this crisis. This is something you can discuss with a freelance developer if you choose to go that route.

You should also ensure that your e-commerce shop includes essential user experiences. That will encourage your customers to complete their purchases and keep coming back for more. You can also look at options for setting up your store if you use WordPress with the help of e-commerce plugins.

Social Media Marketing Strategies

Once you’ve updated your website and added an e-commerce shop, you should also think about incorporating links to your social media pages. That’s because consumers also use social media outlets to find new local businesses, with Facebook being the most popular platform used for this purpose.

Establishing connections between your website and your social media accounts will encourage online shoppers to click through and really get to know your business. You can talk to a web designer or developer about adding social links. Or you can look into tools like Hootsuite, that can manage multiple social media accounts and give you insights into their performance.

Video Conferencing Tools and Options

If you have been talking with other business owners, chances are that you have heard them mention Zoom in the last few months. Zoom is one of the most popular video-conferencing systems right now. People are using this tool to connect to fitness classes, check-ins with friends and families, and, of course, small businesses.

You can use video conferencing for consultations or even as a means to provide other services for your customers. Of course, you can also use Zoom and other tools to meet with your staff and work on other projects. If you’re an enterprise, there are solutions for email and collaboration like Plesk Premium Email that make it easy to connect for remote teams.

COVID-19-Specific Health and Cleaning Tech

Last but not least, small businesses need to be aware of the tech that can keep their employees and customers safe during this ongoing pandemic. This tech could be as simple as infrared thermometers for temperature checks or contactless payment systems. The latter has been growing in popularity over the last few years but contactless payments are predicted to be the future for all in-person sales. If you are looking for an even simpler way to use tech to keep your business clean and safe, you can also use online tools to print signs and decals to remind customers of the COVID-19 rules while shopping in your store. Including social-distancing.

The COVID-19 pandemic makes running a small business and keeping it open challenging but it doesn’t have to make it impossible, especially when there are so many ways to use technology to improve your business and stay connected to your customers. You just need to figure out which tools will make the most difference for your small business.

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Best Practices for Running Your Own Email Server

Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab lets you become your own mail service provider in a few easy steps. It’s like creating a personal Gmail service, one that you control from top to bottom. Running the mail server allows you to store your own email, access the mail server’s logs, and access the raw email files in a user’s mailbox.

However, one key concern when running your own mail server is email deliverability. Without being able to effectively reach your customer base, you cannot do business. So, how do you ensure your emails do not end up as spam?

It’s important to follow common rules and best practices when operating a mail server to guarantee your emails always reach their destination. In this quick guide, we’ll walk you through a few things to consider, to make sure that your emails always end up where you intend.

Reputation Management

Much of email delivery depends on your reputation, which is attached to your IPs and domains.

Please note that there might be different types of setups where you can either influence these things or not:

If you’re running your own server (or VPS – virtual private server) or a bunch of servers with Plesk for shared hosting with WHMCS, you have full influence and control about the following settings.
If you’re an end customer or reseller of a service provider or hoster using Plesk, unfortunately only your hosting provider can do these modifications for you. In case you want to regain control of your environments, it’s time to move your shared hosting account to your own VPS!
If you run Plesk on one of the hyperscale cloud providers such as DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS/Lightsail, Azure, or Google, your default email / SMTP (Port 25 or not) might be blocked on the infrastructure level. If that’s the case, you might need to contact their support to unblock it. In addition, also check that you’re receiving a reverse DNS entry for your IP that is required for operating an email server properly.

The two key-factors that we can influence are:

1. Ensure other servers can distinguish between genuine email coming from your server and spam coming from other servers, pretending to come from your server. If you don’t, a spammer can burn your hard-earned reputation while delivering their spam.

You can ensure this by enabling DKIM/DMARC and SPF protection in Plesk under “Server-Wide Mail Settings”.

2. Ensure your server does not send spam. While less of a problem if you don’t allow for public sign-ups, it is important to maintain vigilance against spammers on your own systems, otherwise your reputation will be impacted. If a spammer can gain illegitimate access to an account on your system, your reputation can be severely damaged.

To address these points you should:

Use Plesk Premium Email to protect yourself against Cross-Site Request Forgery attacks that can be used to gain access to accounts.
Maintain good password hygiene.
Protect all your domains with valid TLS certificates.
Use Plesk Email Security for outbound anti-spam and anti-virus:

Use rate limitations on outbound email. This is especially important in shared hosting environments where multiple customers or domains are sharing the same IP. So you can avoid IP reputation issues if one of your customers is making problems. And avoid that one customer is impacting others.

Finally, there are factors that we can’t completely control:

The age of your domain will affect your reputation; a very new domain will always have a lower reputation.
If you share your IP(s) with other people on the same system, you share part of their reputation. This is for example the case if you have only a shared hosting or reseller account of shared hosting companies.
And in case you want to be in a better shape, we highly recommend that you run your own VPS/VM. You might also want to check your IP address that you get from your provider against its reputation before you take your server into production.

By following these guidelines you can successfully run your own email server, and be confident that your emails will arrive unscathed at their intended destination.

Further Measures

Set a maximum message size for outbound email. Most email services have a limit on the message size, and you should make sure that you are not sending messages larger than that limit. A good standard default is 35 MB.

Require authentication for mail relays to keep an attacker from abusing your mail server.

Review Your Work

As your business continues to grow, it’s important to ensure your messages are delivered to the intended inboxes as planned. MxToolbox helps you check your deliverability. You can head over to MxToolbox and check if your system is set-up correctly.

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Enable Security for Your Business and Teams Even When Remote

Hackers are a notoriously opportunistic lot, and the global COVID-19 pandemic fits their agenda perfectly. According to UK Web security firm Cloudflare, online threats rose by as much as six times their usual levels in the early weeks of the outbreak. Based on the 2020 Data Breaches Investigation Report by Verizon, 28% of the breach victims were small businesses. And from an Accenture report from last year, 68% of business leaders felt their cybersecurity risks are increasing. It’s no wonder that in the wake of recent trends, security has become a top priority for small and medium businesses.

Choose Targeted Security Solutions

“WordPress Toolkit security scanner goes beyond the basics and implements the latest security recommendations and best practices from WP Codex and WP security experts.”

Marcus Krämer, CEO of HostPress

At Plesk, our goal is to prioritize your privacy and safeguard your data and business from security threats. Our tools provide targeted solutions for common security issues with little to no manual work. For example, we asked Marcus Krämer, the founder and CEO of HostPress, about the value WordPress Toolkit brings to their Managed WordPress hosting business. Marcus told us that, “WordPress Toolkit security scanner goes beyond the basics and implements the latest security recommendations and best practices from WP Codex and WP security experts.”

Key Recommendations to Improve Security

Recently, we also talked to Plesk’s Security Engineer, Igor Antipkin, about recommendations that can help you improve your project’s security. Igor outlined the following steps for anyone considering to take proper security approaches:

1. Use threat modeling to identify potential security risks.

As a first step, consider your security risks in the project design phase. List down all kinds of threats you might have. One advantage of using this approach is minimizing the likelihood of security breaches. It also saves you rework in the later stages of your project.

2. Inform yourself and your users about security risks.

Outdated software is the most common problem in this scenario. Make sure that your users know to keep software up to date and all the latest updates and patches are installed. Inform yourself about software security as much as you can. Stay involved in the community to stay up to date about potential issues.

3. Use the principle of least privileges.

Limit user permissions based on individual roles to give access where it’s needed. This limits the amount of damage any single individual can do to a website or server.

Special Offers

To round up, our umbrella of tools with a focus on security include:

Our self-hosted email and collaboration suite, Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab. It includes a secure, private file cloud using Seafile and a secure team messaging platform using Mattermost. You can also enhance email security with the Plesk Email Security extension.
If you use Plesk with WordPress, you can use the WordPress Toolkit to optimize your site’s security. WordPress Toolkit hardens your site by default and is enhanced with the Toolkit’s security scanner, which provides up-to-date recommendations for managing site security.
If you are a hosting reseller, with Plesk’s Web Host Edition you can easily manage teams. You have the ability to set permissions for individual users, developers, designers and content managers, who can seamlessly collaborate across multiple projects. You can also create customer accounts so that external administrators can manage their own services. The edition comes with security for protection from malicious users.

Currently, you can get 6 months free for Plesk Premium Email, 6 months free for WordPress Toolkit for 3 months free for Plesk Web Host Edition. Additional details about these offers can be found here.

We understand that these unprecedented times have brought unprecedented circumstances to us all. You can reach out to our team for support. And let us know in the comments if you’d like to share how your business is doing in the current situation.

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Plesk Premium Email, Powered by Kolab: Secure, Self-Hosted Online Office

When the World Changes, We Respond

Gone are the days of the traditional workplace. Today’s workplace is always online and instantly accessible. It’s become even more clear recently that the traditional, on-premise approach to work is evolving. Innovative companies have already begun to implement new working environments in the cloud. You’ll notice that Microsoft Office has 20 million users worldwide. Slack has 12 million users. By 2023, 347 billion emails will be sent around the world.

As we move more and more processes online, the benefits but also the downsides become clearer. One of the big concerns users have about collaboration platforms is that of privacy. And the option to not get locked into a vendor’s technology stack and cloud. Inter-organization collaboration is also not easy. You can, of course, add partners, customers, and suppliers to your collaboration cloud. But all the data resides within your own tenant. Your partner has no access to it when your relationship ends. This is unlike email, where both parties keep a copy of all correspondence and interactions.

Until this resolves, email will remain an important communication channel.

Delivering the Best Email and Collaboration Experience

This week we announced the release of an enhanced version of Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab. It’s a new addition to the suite of Plesk services that’s more than an extension. Rather, it’s a complete hub for teamwork. It combines multiple collaboration services into a single user experience.

At Plesk, our goal is to preserve your privacy and safeguard your data. So we made sure that our new online office is self-hosted. Meaning that you can store your data on the Plesk server of your choice.

With our email tool, you can synchronize email, calendars, contacts, files, and notes on any desktop or mobile device. You can set up auto-responders or allow real-time notifications for emails. Cloud storage, including WebDAV, lets you securely access files from anywhere. With the Plesk Email Security extension, it’s easy to integrate anti-spam filters so that your mailbox stays safe from viruses and spam.

We also made sure that in this version, teams can collaborate from anywhere in the world. This is why we integrated several collaboration services that are a must for web professionals.

Co-Create with Collabora Online

With the Collabora Online extension, teams can focus on collaborating directly on documents, spreadsheets and presentations. Collabora Online allows for collaborative editing and support for all major file formats. You can use it in any modern web browser without the need for plugins. It’s also open source and comes with document support and customizable integration for existing infrastructure.

Sync and Share Files with Seafile

Plesk Premium Email now allows integration with a self-hosted file sharing solution. The Seafile extension acts as your secure, private file cloud. Its functionality is like other file hosting services, such as Dropbox and Google Drive. The extension allows you to store big files and images in Seafile. You can access it directly from the Plesk Premium Email web interface.

One of the advantages of Seafile is that it gives you the ability to sync and encrypt an entire library separately. You can resume interrupted transfers, create password-protected links, get offline access, and edit documents with the WYSIWYG Markdown editor. The benefit of using Seafile over other platforms is that it supports self-hosted file sharing for private cloud applications.

Stay Connected to Your Team with Mattermost

The Mattermost extension for Plesk Premium Email serves as a secure messaging platform. It allows for teams to have greater connectivity. Teams are not only more productive – they thrive. Plesk’s self-hosted online office brings people, discussions, bots, tools and files together. This shared workspace lets teams collaborate in real-time throughout the project lifecycle. Also, Mattermost’s self-hosted approach provides more control and privacy to teams.

How Do I Get Started?

Are you ready to experience Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab? Get a detailed look into all the features here. We’re offering a special introductory discount of 50% off our regular price. And this time you have the benefit of delayed payment in the 7th contract month. Go ahead and find the right plan for you and your business.

Collabora Online extensions features Kolab Mattermost Plesk Extensions Plesk Premium Email Sealife

Helping You Stay Open and Connected During the COVID-19 Crisis

Strong businesses and communities are driven by people. We’ve responded to COVID-19 by doing whatever we can to keep your business open and our workforce safe. Our services are up and running and our remote teams are ready to help. At Plesk, about two-thirds of our more than 250 employees work from home. Currently, this number is even higher. Working from home doesn’t have to mean your company is less effective. In fact, when done right, a remote workforce can be efficient and happy.

Enabling A Remote Workforce

As your web host and cloud partner, Plesk is here to get you online. With products that power business — now — when it matters most. There are several Plesk extensions that make it easy for your team to communicate and collaborate, and track each other’s progress for multiperson projects.

“Having the right tools in your business can make all the difference, especially when times are turbulent or in transition.”

Frank Garcia, CEO of Co-Solutions

Plesk’s suite of email and collaboration tools, Plesk Premium Email, powered by Kolab, comes integrated with real-time and interactive team solutions. With our email tool, you can synchronize email, calendars, contacts, files, and notes on any desktop or mobile device. We talked to Frank Garcia, CEO of Co-Solutions about how his team is coping with the sudden transition to remote office. “Having the right tools in your business can make all the difference, especially when times are turbulent or in transition,” He noted. “For our remote teams, there are four tools that we absolutely cannot live without, Plesk Premium Email, Seafile, Mattermost, and Collabora.”

The Seafile extension acts as your secure, private file cloud. The extension allows you to store big files and images in Seafile. The Mattermost extension for Plesk Premium Email serves as a secure messaging platform. It allows for teams to have greater connectivity, daily conversations and mini-celebrations. With the Collabora Online extension, teams can focus on collaborating directly on documents, spreadsheets and presentations in real-time.

Takeaways from Managed Cloud Services

Managed cloud services provide business continuity and agility, which are extremely valuable for companies in periods of uncertainty and crisis. Some of our partners have been very agile in adapting and launching new managed services to respond to their customers’ needs.

A good example is NetNation, a leading provider of white-label web service solutions that has built a new generation of managed WordPress to help customers operate their business in these unprecedented circumstances.

We talked to Alex Goncharov from Product Management at NetNation about the WordPress Toolkit — Plesk’s solution for managed WordPress hosting. He told us that, “From online ordering to day-to-day management, WordPress Toolkit has provided a complete solution for our Gate.com brand’s Managed WordPress offering.”

We also talked to Niclas Alvebratt, CEO of Beebyte. Beebyte has been a Plesk partner for a year and a half now. It offers a unique and custom-built control panel for virtual servers, VPS, and shared hosting. Beebyte offers Shared WordPress hosting as one of its main, high-performance solutions.

“Adding the Plesk management layer to hosting services or managed WordPress offering has helped us grow beyond unmanaged services.”

Niclas Alvebratt, CEO of Beebyte

Niclas told us that, “Adding the Plesk management layer to hosting services or managed WordPress offering has helped us grow beyond unmanaged services”. Today, Beebyte is at the top when it comes to WordPress and e-commerce hosting in Sweden, regardless of whether it’s shared hosting, VPS, or multi-server load-balanced solutions. Thanks to its success, Beebyte can focus on continued services to all its users.

Special Offers

We’ve put together some new offers to help you adapt during these uncertain times. All new offers can be found on our pricing page.

Free 6 months of Plesk Premium Email for a yearly subscription, including Seafile and Mattermost for secure file sharing and team messaging.
Free 3 months of Plesk Web Host Edition for a yearly subscription. The package includes unlimited domains, full reseller account, subscription and hosting plan management.
Free 6 months WordPress Toolkit for a yearly subscription, including remote management for agencies.

We will continue to monitor the COVID-19 situation very closely, and further increase our commitment to meet the changing demand patterns within the various industries in which we serve.

Thank you for your continued support and please do not hesitate to contact us.

Stay healthy,
Plesk

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New Kolab Release 2: Plesk Premium Email Anti-spam Integration

Kolab anti-spam integration with Plesk Premium Email extension

We’re outlining how the new integration works between Plesk Premium Email, Dovecot, SpamAssassin and its Bayes algorithms. See how our customers benefit.

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