ServerBuddies Support Blog

Using SFTP(Secure FTP) in Plesk

Secure FTP is more secure than FTP since it uses the SSH protocol. Shell access must be enabled for each Plesk user for each account.

In the setup page select /bin/bash(chrooted) under the Shell access to server with FTP user’s credentials. This user will now be able to login over SFTP. Remember to change the port in your FTP client. If you are sure you don’t want users to login over standard FTP you can also block this port via the Firewall module in Plesk

The following rules would apply:

You can further secure your FTP server if you have a static IP by allowing access only from that IP. If the static IP is 10.1.1.2 your rules would be:

Using SFTP if the default ssh port is changed

Usually if the SFTP is enabled in your server, it will try to use the default SSH port (port 22) even though the SSH service may be running on another SSH port (ie: port 2222).
In this case, the SSH port is running on 2222.
Since SFTP will attempt to connect to port 22, you will have to specify a non-default port for SSH connections so SFTP can issue a proper connection to the remote destination. You can accomplish this by running the following command.