Domain is down on Plesk: HTTP Error 403.503 - Forbidden

Vincent Lauton

Updated September 30, 2025 20:49

Plesk for Windows Plesk for Linux kb: technical

Applicable to:

A domain hosted on Plesk is down with an error like these:

HTTP Error 403.503 - Forbidden
Detailed Error Information:
Module IpRestrictionModule

Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server
Additionally, a 403 Forbidden error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request
This is logged to the domain log /var/www/vhosts/system/example.com/error_log on Plesk for Linux:

AH01797: client denied by server configuration: /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/index.php

The web server has been configured to deny access from all IP addresses in Plesk.

Remove the IP address block, or whitelist the IP address that should have access.

Plesk for Windows

Log into Plesk
Go to Domains > example.com > Hosting & DNS > IIS Settings
- Set Deny access to the site to Default to allow all IP addresses to access, or
- Add the client's IP address to the Excluding list to allow only this IP address

Plesk for Linux

Log into Plesk
Go to Domains > example.com > Hosting & DNS > Apache & nginx
- Set Deny access to the site to Default to allow all IP addresses to access, or
- Add the client's IP address to the Excluding list to allow only this IP address