Migrating a cPanel account to Plesk from a .tar.gz backup

The only reliable manual method

This guide describes the only safe and fully supported way to migrate a cPanel account to Plesk when you only have a backup-xxxx.tar.gz file and no root access to the original cPanel server.

This is the exact scenario when:

The cPanel server is shared hosting
Root access is not available
Plesk Migrator cannot connect via SSH
You only have a Full cPanel Backup (.tar.gz)

Why direct import of .tar.gz into Plesk fails

Plesk Migrator does not support importing cPanel .tar.gz backups directly from the CLI or API.

Plesk Migrator supports:

Live migration (SSH from cPanel server)
Plesk-to-Plesk backup restore

But cPanel archive import only exists in the GUI, and even there it still expects to simulate a live cPanel environment.

If the original cPanel is on shared hosting, SSH-based migration will fail with errors like:

Permission denied
Cannot create /root/plesk_migrator
rsync failed

That is expected behavior.

The only correct solution

You must recreate a real root-access cPanel environment, restore the backup there, and then migrate it properly to Plesk.

This is how professional hosting companies do it.

Architecture

[ Old cPanel Shared Host ]
        |
        |  (You downloaded)
        v
 backup-username.tar.gz
        |
        |
        v
[ Temporary cPanel VPS (Root Access) ]
        |
        |  (Plesk Migrator via SSH)
        v
[ Plesk Server ]

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