How to Access Softaculous in Plesk

Softaculous is the one-click application installer that Noiz runs on its shared Plesk servers. It builds WordPress, Joomla, Nextcloud, PrestaShop and hundreds of other applications for you, creating the files, the database and the configuration in a single pass. Finding it is where Plesk differs from other control panels. Plesk has no fixed Software section the way cPanel does, so depending on how your subscription is displayed, Softaculous can appear as an entry in the left-hand menu, as a control on a domain's card, or as both. This guide shows you every place it surfaces in a Noiz Plesk subscription, how to open it against the right domain when your account holds several, and what to check when you cannot see it at all.

A word on names first, because it accounts for a good share of the "I cannot find it" tickets. The same tool is labelled Softaculous, Applications, Apps Installer or Softaculous Auto Installer (the name it carries in the Plesk extensions catalogue) depending on the Plesk release and how the panel has been themed. They are all the same installer, and any of them opens the same interface.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against the current Plesk and Softaculous releases. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against Plesk and Softaculous. It complements, and does not replace, the official Plesk and Softaculous documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• Softaculous end-user documentation: the authoritative reference for everything you do once Softaculous is open, including installing, cloning, staging, backing up and removing an application.
• Softaculous for Plesk: the vendor's overview of the Plesk integration and the current application count.
• Softaculous Auto Installer in the Plesk Extensions Catalogue: the extension listing, relevant if you run your own Plesk server and need to install it yourself.
• Softaculous application list: check here before you go looking, to confirm the application you want is one Softaculous carries.
• Overview of the Plesk Interface (Plesk Customer's Guide): useful background on the left-hand menu and the Websites & Domains page referred to throughout this guide.

Prerequisites

• An active Noiz hosting subscription on Plesk, and the ability to log in to Plesk. The panel address and your login are in your Noiz welcome email and in the Noiz client area.
• At least one domain already added to the subscription. Softaculous installs onto a domain, so if the subscription is empty there is nothing for it to install onto. See how to add a new domain in Plesk or how to add a subdomain first.
• The main subscription login rather than an additional user account you created underneath it. Additional users inherit only the permissions you granted them, and extension access is one of the things that can be withheld.
• If you are new to the tool itself, What Is Softaculous? explains what it does before you go looking for it.

Is Softaculous Available on Your Noiz Plan?

This is worth settling before you spend time hunting through the interface, because the answer depends on what kind of hosting you have with Noiz.

On Noiz shared hosting, yes. Softaculous is installed and licensed by Noiz on the shared Plesk servers, and on the Noiz shared servers generally. There is nothing for you to buy, install or switch on, and it costs you nothing extra. If you hold a shared hosting subscription and cannot see Softaculous, treat that as something to diagnose (the troubleshooting section below covers it) rather than as a sign that your plan excludes it.

On your own VPS or dedicated server, no, not automatically. Softaculous is licensed per server, and the Noiz licence covers the Noiz shared servers. It does not automatically extend to a server you administer yourself. If you run your own unmanaged Plesk server and want Softaculous on it, you buy your own Softaculous licence and add the extension yourself from the Plesk extensions catalogue, as the vendor listing linked above describes. You then become the server administrator for it, which means the server-level Softaculous Admin Panel and its settings are yours to manage. If your VPS is on a Noiz managed plan, ask Noiz support what is already included before buying anything.

Where Softaculous Appears in Plesk

Plesk surfaces Softaculous in more than one place, and which of them you see depends on your Plesk release, your view mode and whether you are looking at the subscription as a whole or at one domain. Any of the following routes opens the same installer, so use whichever appears for you.

Route 1: The left-hand menu

Look down the left-hand navigation menu of Plesk for an entry named Applications. On the Noiz Plesk servers this is the usual home for Softaculous, and it is the fastest route. Opening it puts you into the Softaculous front page, scoped to your subscription, with the application categories listed down one side and the popular installers on the front page.

Do not expect a separate icon labelled "Softaculous" sitting on its own. Plesk presents the installer as a normal menu entry belonging to the subscription, alongside Websites & Domains, Mail and Databases, rather than as a tile in a grid of tools. If you are coming to Plesk from cPanel, that difference is the single most common reason people conclude the installer is missing when it is not.

Route 2: From the domain on Websites & Domains

Open Websites & Domains and find the card or row for the domain you want to work on. Alongside the other per-domain controls you may see an entry for Applications, Install Applications or Softaculous. This route has a real advantage over the menu: it opens Softaculous with that domain already selected, so there is no chance of installing onto the wrong one.

What you can see on this page is affected by your view mode. Plesk offers more than one way of presenting Websites & Domains, and the compact presentations hide controls behind an expander or a menu rather than showing them all at once. If a domain's card looks unusually bare, that is the likely cause, and changing the view mode in Plesk will bring the full set of controls back.

Route 3: Plesk's own search box

Type Softaculous, or Applications, into the search box at the top of the Plesk interface. This is the most reliable route of the three, because it does not care where in the menu structure the entry currently sits or what the theme has renamed it to. Use it first if the other two routes come up empty, and use it whenever a Plesk update has moved things around.

Opening Softaculous Against the Right Domain

Almost every Noiz Plesk subscription that causes trouble here is one holding several domains or subdomains. Softaculous is scoped to a subscription, not to a domain, so entering it from the left-hand menu gives you an installer that can reach every domain and subdomain in that subscription. That is convenient and it is also how sites end up in the wrong place.

• Enter through the domain wherever you can. Route 2 above pre-selects the domain for you, which removes the decision entirely. On a multi-domain subscription this is the safer habit.
• If you entered through the menu, check the domain field on the install form. Softaculous presents a domain selector (commonly labelled Choose Domain) on the installation form, pre-filled with one of your domains. It will not necessarily be the one you had in mind. Read it before you click Install, every time.
• Check the directory field in the same glance. The field that controls the subfolder is the one people get wrong most often, and it interacts with the domain choice: the wrong domain plus a pre-filled subfolder puts a site somewhere nobody will find it. How to Install WordPress with Softaculous walks through both fields properly.
• Subdomains appear as installable targets in their own right. A subdomain you added in Plesk has its own document root, so installing onto blog.yourdomain.com (replace with your own domain) is a genuine, separate installation and not the same as installing into a /blog folder on the main domain.
• Do not install onto a domain alias. If an alias appears in the domain list, avoid it. An alias exists to point visitors at another domain's content and has no document root of its own, so an installation aimed at one does not end up where you expect.
• If your login holds more than one subscription, Plesk shows a subscription selector at the top of Websites & Domains. Softaculous only ever sees the domains in the subscription you currently have open, so if a domain you expected is missing from the domain list, you are almost certainly in the other subscription. Switch first, then open Softaculous again.

How to Tell It Actually Opened

Softaculous loads inside the Plesk interface rather than replacing it, so a partial load can look like a broken page. You have reached it properly when all of the following are true:

• The application categories are listed down the side, and a search field for applications sits at the top of the Softaculous area. Note that this search field searches applications, not Plesk, and is a different box from the Plesk search described in Route 3.
• There is a way back to Plesk visible in the Softaculous toolbar. Use it rather than the browser back button, which can drop you part way through an install form.
• An Installations view (sometimes shown as a small box or list icon in the toolbar) opens and lists what is already installed under this subscription. On a new subscription this list is legitimately empty, and an empty list is a working Softaculous, not a broken one.

If the page renders but every panel is empty, or it spins indefinitely, that is a loading problem rather than an access problem. Go to the troubleshooting section below.

Troubleshooting: You Cannot See Softaculous

Symptom: no Applications entry in the left-hand menu. Try the Plesk search box (Route 3) before concluding anything. Menu entries move between Plesk releases and can be renamed by a theme, but the search index still finds them.

Symptom: the domain card on Websites & Domains shows only a handful of controls. This is a view mode effect rather than a missing feature. Switch to a fuller view mode and the per-domain controls reappear.

Symptom: a domain you expected is not in the list. You are looking at the wrong subscription. Use the subscription selector at the top of Websites & Domains to switch, then reopen Softaculous.

Symptom: you are logged in as an additional user and see fewer options than the account owner does. Additional user accounts in Plesk carry only the permissions granted to them, and access to extensions is one of the permissions that can be withheld. Log in with the main subscription login to confirm, then adjust the additional user's role if you want them to have it.

Symptom: the Softaculous area loads blank, spins forever, or shows a broken frame. This is nearly always a browser extension, a privacy add-on or an ad blocker interfering with the framed interface. Test in a private or incognito window first, then in a different browser, before reporting a fault.

Symptom: you are bounced back to the Plesk login part way through. Plesk sessions expire, and an install form left sitting open while you fetch a password is long enough for it to happen. Log back in and start the form again rather than resubmitting the stale page.

Symptom: none of the above and it is genuinely absent on a Noiz shared subscription. Contact Noiz support with your domain name and what you have already tried. Softaculous is a server-side component, so its presence is not something you can switch on from inside your subscription, and this is a case for Noiz to check at the server level.

Separately, if Softaculous opens perfectly well but an installation fails part way through, that is a different problem with a different answer: see where to find the Softaculous error log in a Plesk subscription.

Softaculous and WordPress Toolkit on the Same Server

Plesk servers frequently carry WordPress Toolkit as well, and it appears in the same left-hand menu. Both will install WordPress and neither manages sites created by the other, so decide which one owns a given site and stay with it. Softaculous is the better choice when you want one installer covering hundreds of different applications. WordPress Toolkit is stronger for ongoing WordPress work such as cloning, staging and bulk plugin updates across many sites. Installing the same site twice, once with each, leaves you with two sites and two databases rather than one managed site.

What to Do Next

With Softaculous open, pick your application and work through its installation form. The two fields that decide where the site actually lands are the domain selector and the directory field, and the Softaculous end-user documentation linked above covers the rest of the form in detail. For a guided run through the most common case, follow how to install WordPress with Softaculous. If you are still deciding whether Softaculous is the right route for what you are building, What Is Softaculous? sets out what it handles beyond the initial install. If your hosting is on cPanel rather than Plesk, the equivalent guide is how to access Softaculous in cPanel.

If Softaculous still will not appear on your Noiz shared subscription, or you would rather an application was installed and configured for you on the correct domain, open a ticket from your Noiz client area with the domain name and the application you want, and Noiz support will take it from there.