Managing Installed Plugins
Run the plugins you already have: the installed list, enabling and disabling, configuration, connection tests, run history, updates, removal and what happens to services when a plugin is off.
What the Plugins page is for
Plugins are how your installation talks to the outside world: they provision servers on a hypervisor or control panel, take card and wallet payments, deliver notifications to a chat service, send email through a transport, or add an analytics tag to the client portal. The Plugins page is where the plugins installed on your instance are listed, switched on and off, given their credentials, tested, updated and removed.
The rest of this category explains how to build a plugin. This article is about running the ones you already have.
How to open it
Open Settings from the admin sidebar and choose Plugins under the Integrations group. Reaching Settings at all requires the View Settings permission; Super Admins always see it. See Staff & Permissions.
Reading the page
Four counters sit across the top: Total Plugins, Active, Draft and Infrastructure. Below them are a search box and two dropdowns, All Types and All Status, which narrow the grid.
Each plugin is a card showing a coloured icon for its type, its name, its short identifier underneath, its description, a coloured status dot with the status name, and a Configure button in the bottom-right corner. If the plugin has recorded a failure, a red box on the card carries the message.
Hovering a card reveals a menu button in its top-right corner with Edit, Enable or Disable, Duplicate, Export JSON and Delete. Clicking anywhere else on the card opens the plugin’s editor.
Statuses
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| Draft (grey) | Created or imported but never switched on. It does nothing and is invisible everywhere else in the panel. |
| Active (green) | Switched on and registered. Its gateway, provisioning actions, notification channel, email transport or analytics tag are live. |
| Disabled (amber) | Switched off deliberately. Everything it contributes is withdrawn, but nothing is deleted — connections, settings and flows are kept. |
| Error (red) | Something failed while the plugin was running. The message appears on the card. Fix the cause, then enable it again — enabling clears the error. |
Plugin types
| Type | What it adds when enabled |
|---|---|
| Infrastructure | A provisioning provider. Products can be pointed at it, and its actions appear on the services it created — power, reinstall, console, snapshots and so on. |
| Payment Gateway | A payment method at checkout, on invoices and on credit top-ups. Also see Settings: Payment Gateways. |
| Notification | A delivery channel for platform events, with its own subscriptions and message templates. See Notification Plugins. |
| Automation | Flows that run on a schedule or on demand rather than against one service. |
| Authentication | An extra sign-in option for the client portal. |
| AI Provider | A model provider for the assistant features. |
| Email Transport | An alternative route for outgoing email. |
| Analytics | A tracking tag on the client portal, configured from a single Configuration tab. |
| Custom | Anything that does not fit the categories above. |
Install a plugin
Click Import in the top-right, then drop a file on the upload area or click it to browse. Both a JSON file and a packaged archive are accepted.
Before anything is written, the window previews what the file contains: the plugin’s name, its type and description, and badges counting the flows, forms, connections and webhooks inside. Click Import Plugin to install it. The plugin’s editor opens straight afterwards.
An imported plugin arrives as a Draft. It does nothing until you configure it and enable it.
Warning: A plugin runs with your instance’s credentials and can reach any address its connections name. Import only files you obtained from a source you trust.
To build one instead, click New Plugin and follow the creation wizard — see Creating a Plugin.
Configure a plugin
Click Configure on a card. This window holds the values the plugin asks for — API keys, account identifiers, hostnames, toggles and choices — exactly as the plugin author defined them. Fill them in and click Save Configuration.
Points worth knowing:
- A plugin that needs no values shows a short message saying so instead of a form.
- Fields marked as secrets are write-only. Once saved they are shown masked; leaving a masked field untouched keeps the stored value.
- Some fields offer a copy button for a value you must paste into the other system — for example a callback address it should send events to.
Extra controls for payment gateways
A payment-gateway plugin opens with two tabs, Settings and Checkout Display.
- The Settings tab adds an Enabled checkbox and a Sandbox mode checkbox, so you can hold a fully configured gateway out of checkout or point it at the provider’s test environment.
- Where your plan provides a fixed outbound address, it is shown with a copy button so you can add it to the provider’s allow-list.
- Well-known providers show a short setup checklist and a button that validates the credentials you entered and registers the callback for you. When it succeeds the window reports Connected, the account it verified and when it was last verified; when it fails it reports Last connection attempt failed with the reason.
- The Checkout Display tab controls how the method is presented to customers: Display name, Description, and an Icon chosen from presets or supplied as an image address, with a live preview of the row as the customer will see it.
Connections and testing
Credentials for the systems a plugin talks to live on its Connections tab — open the plugin (click its card), then choose Connections. Each connection has a name, a base address, an authentication method and any headers or query values it needs. The available methods are None, API Key, Bearer Token, Basic Auth, Query Parameters, OAuth2 Token, Custom Header and two signed-request methods for providers that require them.
Each connection row carries a test button. Click it and the platform performs a live request:
- Success turns the row’s indicator green and records Last tested with the date and time.
- Failure turns it red and shows the reason next to the timestamp, so a wrong key, an unreachable host or a rejected certificate is named rather than guessed at.
Test after every credential change. A plugin with an untested connection will still enable — the failure will surface later, on a real customer order.
The field-by-field detail is in Connections & Authentication, and the values form itself in Configuration Settings.
Enable and disable
Open the card menu and choose Enable or Disable. The change takes effect immediately, with no restart.
Enabling registers what the plugin provides: a gateway becomes selectable at checkout, an authentication provider appears on the sign-in page, an AI provider and an email transport become available to the features that use them, a notification channel starts receiving the events it is subscribed to. Enabling also clears a previous Error state.
Disabling withdraws all of that in the same step. Nothing is deleted.
What happens to services a disabled plugin was provisioning
Disabling a plugin does not touch the services it created, and it does not touch billing. Concretely:
- Existing services stay exactly as they are. They keep their status, they keep renewing, and their invoices are still raised and paid as normal.
- Live actions stop working. Power buttons, reinstalls, console access, usage graphs and any other action that reaches the external system fail while the plugin is off, with a message saying the plugin is not enabled. This applies to the admin panel, the client portal and the reseller area alike.
- New provisioning cannot complete. An order for a product backed by the disabled plugin will not be built; the service stays unprovisioned until you enable the plugin and retry.
- Automatic lifecycle steps that go through the plugin — suspending an overdue service, unsuspending it after payment, terminating a cancelled one — will not reach the external system either. The status in the panel and the state of the real server can therefore drift apart while a plugin is off.
- A disabled payment gateway disappears from checkout for everyone, including for invoices already waiting to be paid.
Tip: Disable a plugin to stop new business through it while you fix credentials, and re-enable it before the next renewal run. If a provider is going away permanently, migrate or terminate the services first and delete the plugin last.
Update a plugin
Updating uses the same Import button. Choose the newer file; because it carries the same identifier as an installed plugin, the window switches to an amber Update available notice naming the installed plugin and its current status, and the button changes to Update Plugin.
The notice states exactly what happens: the plugin’s flows, forms, connections and webhooks are updated from the file, while connection secrets and configuration values are preserved — you do not have to re-enter credentials. A plugin that was enabled stays enabled.
Note: Structures defined in the file are replaced by the file’s versions. If you edited the plugin’s flows or forms yourself, export a copy first (below) so you can compare and reapply your changes.
Copy, export and delete
- Duplicate creates an independent copy under a new identifier, in Draft. Use it to try a change without touching the plugin that is serving customers.
- Export JSON downloads the plugin as a file named after the plugin and today’s date. It is the way to keep a backup, move a plugin to another installation, or hand it to a colleague. Exporting is limited to Super Admins.
- Delete asks for confirmation, then removes the plugin together with everything inside it — its connections and their stored credentials, its flows, forms, webhooks, configuration values and logs. This cannot be undone. Export first.
For some supplied plugins Duplicate and Export JSON are greyed out; hovering explains that the plugin is protected by its developer.
Warning: Deleting the plugin behind live services leaves those services with no way to reach their external system. Disable it first and confirm nothing depends on it before deleting.
Activity and run history
There is no single feed for a plugin. Each kind of activity has its own view, all reached by opening the plugin (click its card) and picking a tab:
| You want to see | Where it is |
|---|---|
| Whether a flow ran, what it received and where it stopped | The Flows tab: open a flow and load its execution history. Each entry shows the run’s outcome and the steps it went through, so a failure can be traced to the node that produced it. Execution history is available to Super Admins. |
| Incoming callbacks from the external system | The Webhooks tab: each webhook keeps a delivery log of the requests it received and how they were answered. |
| Messages a notification plugin sent | The Notifications tab of a notification plugin, which lists what was sent, to which event it belonged and whether it succeeded. |
| Whether a connection is still good | The Connections tab: the Last tested line and its result. |
| The last failure that put the plugin into Error | The red message on the plugin’s card on the Plugins page. |
| Who enabled, disabled, imported or deleted a plugin | Activity Log. |
| What happened while a specific service was being built | The provisioning history on that service’s own page — see Service Details. |
Common problems
| Symptom | What to check |
|---|---|
| The plugin is not offered anywhere in the panel | Its status is Draft or Disabled. Enable it from the card menu. |
| A payment method is missing at checkout although the plugin is Active | The gateway’s own Enabled checkbox in the Configure window is unticked, or its currency and country rules exclude that customer. |
| Actions on a service fail with a message that the plugin is not enabled | The provider plugin behind that service has been disabled or deleted. |
| The connection test fails after an update | The provider rotated or scoped the credentials. Re-enter them in Configure, save, and test again. |
| The card shows Error and a message | Read the message, fix the cause, then choose Enable — that clears the error state. |
| Import is refused as an invalid file | The file is not a plugin file, or it was altered after export. Re-export it from the source installation. |
| Orders sit unprovisioned | Check the plugin’s status, then its connection test, then the flow’s execution history for the failing step. |
Related
Introduction to Plugins, Creating a Plugin, Connections & Authentication, Configuration Settings, Building Flows, Notification Plugins, Packaging, Importing & Updating, Settings: Payment Gateways, Service Details.