3. Choose a Release Tier

One more step before upgrading a Plesk installation is to choose a proper Plesk version depending on its release tier.

Each major version of Plesk passes through a number of development stages. It is natural that on earlier stages, some of newly implemented features may not be in their final state and may require some further modification. The functionality of such features in subsequent Plesk versions is improved as they receive more customer feedback over time. To indicate the stage of the current Plesk version, we assign one of the following release tiers to it: Testing release, Early Adopter release, General release, and Late Adopter release. The decision about what tier to use is absolutely up to you. For example, consider upgrading to the early adopter release if you want to try new features before the general availability of Plesk. On the other hand, if you want to have the solution that received all major updates and is successfully used by a number of service providers, wait until Plesk achieves the late adopter release status (it may be a couple of months after the general release).

Choose one of the following:

• Testing release.
  We start each release cycle with publishing a number of testing releases for preview purposes and let you sequentially upgrade from the first one to the last, and then upgrade to higher release tiers. We do not provide technical support for such builds even if they were upgraded to higher tiers. Thus, avoid using this build in a production environment.

  Notes:
  1. By default, testing builds are not shown as available for installation. You can install the testing Plesk version only by running Plesk Installer with one of the special options. Learn more in the chapter Manual Upgrade.
  2. Upgrade to the next testing release is available only to the users of a testing build. Subsequent Plesk builds do not have the corresponding option in the GUI.

• Early Adopter release.
  An early adopter release has all claimed features and previous versions successfully upgrade to it. The quality of this version is eventually improved by updates. By selecting the early adopter release you become the first to see the new features and receive the freshest updates.
• General release.
  A general release has passed all quality tests. Minor issues are promptly fixed by updates. We recommend that you always upgrade Plesk to general release versions.
• Late Adopter release.
  A late adopter release has received all major updates issued for the current Plesk version, and a number of service providers have successfully used it for some time.

During the manual in-place upgrade, selection of a Plesk version is one of the installation wizard steps. If an upgrade is automated by a script, you should specify a certain Plesk version using Installer options. For users of Virtuozzo templates, a release Plesk version is the only option.