Automatic Email Notifications

summary

In Plesk, you can set up automatic email notifications to inform yourself, as well as your customers and resellers, about certain events, such as the expiration of a subscription or the suspension of an account.

In this topic, you will learn how to configure who receives specific notifications, and how to customize how notifications look and what they say. You will also learn how to customize the email address the notifications are sent from.

Most notifications are sent out immediately except for:

  • Notifications for resource overuse and account suspension. Those are sometimes sent up to 24 hours after the event has occurred.
  • Expiration warnings (currently only “Subscription expiration warning”). For them you can specify how many days in advance the notification will be sent.

The notifications are customizable. For each notification, you can:

  • Specify its recipients.
  • Change its text and subject.
  • Customize its look.
  • See how it looks in emails.

You can also customize the sender email address of all notifications displayed in Tools & Settings > Notifications (under “Plesk”).

Customizing the sender email address

By default, Plesk sends email notifications using your email address specified in My Profile. However, you may want your users to see another email address in the “From” field of Plesk email notifications. In this case, you can customize the sender email address.

You can specify any email address: one whose mailbox is hosted in Plesk or any other.

Note

There is always a chance that email notifications will land in spam. To reduce this possibility, we recommend that you use a mailbox hosted in Plesk. In Plesk, it is easier to configure the mailbox properly so that email notifications will reach the inbox.

To customize the sender email address:

  1. Open the panel.ini file for editing, which is located here:

    • (Plesk for Linux) /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini
    • (Plesk for Windows) %plesk_dir%admin\conf\panel.ini

    You can also edit the file in the Plesk interface using the Panel.ini Editor extension.

  2. Add lines of the following pattern to the panel.ini and save it:

    [notification]
senderAddress=<custom email address>

    For example:

    [notification]
senderAddress=plesk_notifications@example.com

Your Plesk users will now see the custom email address in the “From” field of Plesk email notifications.

Note

We also recommend that you ask your users to add the email address you have specified earlier to their email address books. This will improve the deliverability of email notifications.

Specifying recipients of the notifications

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > Notifications (under “Plesk”).

  2. Find a notification and specify who will receive it:

    • Customers, resellers, and/or yourself. To send to these recipients, select the corresponding checkboxes. The email addresses will be taken from the contact information.
    • A single custom email. To send to the custom email, select the checkbox next to the “Email address” field and fill in the email.

    You can send the notification both to the custom email and to email addresses taken from the contact information.

  3. When you are satisfied with the specified recipients, click OK.

Changing the text and subject of the notification

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > Notifications (under “Plesk”).

  2. Find a notification whose text and/or subject you want to edit and then click the image-icon-edit.png icon on the corresponding line.

  3. Change the notification text and/or subject. You can use HTML tags to format the text.

    Note

    When customizing the default template, keep the placeholders. Usually you will see placeholders in the text of the notification. They are replaced with actual values when the notifications are sent out. Find the complete list of available placeholders below.

  4. When you are satisfied with the edited text and/or subject, click OK.

Customizing the look of the notifications

The default HTML template defines how the notifications look. You can customize the default look by changing the default template or uploading a custom one.

(Plesk for Linux) To change the way the notifications look:

  • Customize the default /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/email_notification_template.html.sample template, copy it to /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/email_notification_template.html and then edit the copied file.

    Note

    When customizing the default template, keep the placeholders.

  • Create a new template, name it email_notification_template.html and upload it to the /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/ directory.

    The look of the notifications will be now defined by the usr/local/psa/admin/conf/email_notification_template.html template.

(Plesk for Windows) To change the way the notifications look:

  • Customize the default %plesk_dir%admin\conf\email_notification_template.html.sample template, copy it to %plesk_dir%admin\conf\email_notification_template.html and then edit the copied file.

    Note

    When customizing the default template, keep the placeholders.

  • Create a new template, name it email_notification_template.html and upload it to the %plesk_dir%admin\conf\ folder.

    The look of the notifications will be now defined by the %plesk_dir%admin\conf\email_notification_template.html template.

Note

We recommend that you keep the default email_notification_template.html.sample template. Then if you are not satisfied with a customized or an uploaded template, just delete it and the default look of the notifications will be back.

Note

If the default email_notification_template.html.sample template is missing, it will be automatically restored during the next Plesk update.

Previewing the notification

You can always see how a notification will look in emails. It is particularly useful if you have changed the text or customized the look of the notifications and want to see the result.

To see how a notification will look in emails:

  1. Go to Tools & Settings > Notifications (under “Plesk”).

  2. Find a notification that you want to preview and then click the image-icon-preview.png icon on the corresponding line. The preview will be opened in a new tab.

  3. See how the notification looks in emails.

    Note

    Usually you will see placeholders in the text of the notification. They are replaced with actual values when the notification is sent out.

Available placeholders

{% raw %}

Event type Tags that can be used in notices The data that tags denote
Creation of a reseller or customer account

{{ reseller_contact_name }}

{{ client_contact_name }}

 user’s first and last name
 

{{ reseller_login }}

{{ client_login }}

 user name for authorization in Plesk
  {{ password }} user’s password for authorization in Plesk
 

{{ reseller_company_name }}

{{ client_company_name }}

 company name
 

{{ reseller_cr_date }}

{{ client_cr_date }}

 user account creation date
 

{{ reseller_phone }}

{{ client_phone }}

 phone number
 

{{ reseller_fax }}

{{ client_fax }}

 fax number
 

{{ reseller_country }}

{{ client_country }}

 country
 

{{ reseller_state_province }}

{{ client_state_province }}

 state or province
 

{{ reseller_city }}

{{ client_city }}

 city
 

{{ reseller_postal_ZIP_code }}

{{ client_postal_ZIP_code }}

 postal or ZIP code
 

{{ reseller_address }}

{{ user_address }}

 address
 

{{ reseller_id }}

{{ user_id }}

 unique identifier assigned by the system
 

{{ reseller_email }}

{{ client_email }}

 email
 

{{ reseller_expiration_date }}

{{ client_email_expiration_date }}

 account expiration date
  {{ hostname }} host name for access to Plesk
Addition of a new website to the server {{ domain }} domain name
 

{{ reseller_login }}

{{ client_login }}

 user name for authorization in Plesk
 

{{ reseller_contact_name }}

{{ client_contact_name }}

{{ user_contact_name }}

 user’s first and last name
  {{ dom_id }} unique identifier assigned by the system
  {{ ip }} IP address the website is hosted on
Subscription expiration notices {{ domain_name }} subscription name
 

{{ reseller_login }}

{{ client_login }}

{{ user_login }}

 user name for authorization in Plesk
 

{{ reseller_contact_name }}

{{ client_contact_name }}

{{ user_contact_name }}

 user’s first and last name
  {{ dom_id }} unique identifier assigned by the system
  {{ domain_expiration_date }} subscription expiration date
APS application updates notices {{ available_updates_text }} text about available updates
  {{ available_updates_list }} list of available updates
  {{ installed_updates_text }} text about installed updates
  {{ installed_updates_list }} list of installed updates
  {{ requirements_updates_text }} text about updates in application requirements
  {{ requirements_updates_list }} list of updates in application requirements
Resource overuse notices {{ domain_name }} subscription name
  {{ limit_name }} name of a resource
 

{{ reseller_login }}

{{ client_login }}

{{ user_login }}

 user name for authorization in Plesk
 

{{ reseller_contact_name }}

{{ client_contact_name }}

{{ user_contact_name }}

 user’s first and last name
  {{ disk_usage }} information about disk space usage
  {{ disk_space_limit }} information about the amount of disk space allocated to the account
  {{ resource_table }} information about all resource limits that were or will soon be reached
  {{ traffic }} information about bandwidth usage
  {{ traffic_limit }} information about the bandwidth amount allotted to the account

{% endraw %}

Note

{% raw %}If you upgraded to Plesk Obsidian from an earlier version, then all custom notifications templates you previously used remain in effect. Because of changes in user accounts hierarchy and addition of resource overuse scheme, now any type of resource can be overused. Therefore, to show information about all overused resources in notifications’ templates, we recommend using a single variable {{ resource_table }} instead of the variables {{ disk_usage }}, {{ disk_space_limit }}, {{ traffic }}, and {{ traffic_limit }}.{% endraw %}