Earlier in this guide we spoke about service plans. In short, while a service plan is a template that contains resources and permissions, a subscription is a copy of a service plan assigned to a customer account. Owning a subscription enables a customer to use one or more services (for example, to host a website or use mail) if the subscription includes the corresponding resources and permissions.

To create a subscription for one of your customers, go to Customers, click the name of the customer that will be the owner of the subscription, then Subscriptions > Add Subscription.

To see a list of all subscriptions, go to Subscriptions. You can perform the following operations here:

• To create a new subscription for your personal use, click Add Subscription. You can use this subscription, for example, to establish your online presence. Note that resources used for your personal subscriptions count against the limits imposed by your reseller plan (for example, if your reseller plan includes 30 websites, creating a website of your own will decrease the number of websites you can resell to your customers by one).
• To change the hosting plan for one or more subscriptions, select the checkboxes next to the names of subscriptions you want to switch to a different plan and click Change Plan. You can change the hosting plan, as well as add or remove add-on plans assigned to the subscription.
• To change the owner of one or more subscriptions, select the checkboxes next to the names of subscriptions whose ownership you want to change and click Change Subscriber. You can take ownership of the selected subscriptions or assign them to any other customer account.
• To suspend or reactivate one or more subscriptions, select the checkboxes next to the names of subscriptions whose status you want to change and click either Change Status > Suspend or Change Status > Activate. Note that as long as a subscription is suspended, all websites associated with it are also suspended.
• To remove one or more subscriptions, select the checkboxes next to the names of subscriptions you want to remove and click Remove.

To change the properties of a subscription, go to Subscriptions and click the name of the subscription whose properties you want to change. You can perform the following operations here:

• To change various hosting settings for any of the domains hosted on the subscription (for example, change the PHP version for a website, or secure a website with an SSL/TLS certificate) use the corresponding controls. They are described in detail in the Website Management section.
• To change the subscription’s IP address, choose the database server that will be used by the websites belonging to the subscription, or to change the system user’s username or password, click Change Hosting Settings.
• To change the amount of resources allocated to the subscription, or the permissions associated with the subscription, click Customize. Note that changing any settings on this screen will make the subscription locked for sync (that is, changes made to the hosting plan the subscription is based on will not propagate to a locked subscription).

Synced and locked subscriptions

A newly created subscription based on a service plan starts out in sync.

This means that the subscription’s properties copy the hosting plan it is based on perfectly. In addition, whenever changes are made to the hosting plan, all subscriptions based on that plan which are not locked are updated automatically.

A subscription becomes locked when you make any changes to it (Subscriptions > click the name of the subscription > Customize).

Subscriptions that are locked are not affected by changes made to hosting plans.

A subscription can also become out of sync without being locked.

A subscription that is out of sync does not include certain resources or permissions offered by the hosting plan. To resolve this, the subscription has to be synced (Subscriptions > click the name of the subscription > Sync).

When syncing a subscription, you may encounter the Synchronization Failed screen.

This means that the sync procedure failed for one or more domains assigned to the subscription. The most likely cause is the fact that the hosting plan on which the subscription is based includes resources or permissions that are unavailable to you. In the example above, the sync procedure failed because the PHP version and handler management permission, which is included in the hosting plan (note the Plan value column), is not, in fact, available (note the Available value column).

To resolve this situation, you need to either remove the resources and permissions that are unavailable to you from the hosting plan (Service Plans > click the name of the plan), or contact your hosting provider to discuss making those resources and permissions available.