diff --git a/tests/plugins/Dockerfile b/tests/plugins/Dockerfile
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..93541408f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/plugins/Dockerfile
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+# https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt/pull/431#issuecomment-103659297
+# it is more likely developers will already have ubuntu:trusty rather
+# than e.g. debian:jessie and image size differences are negligible
+FROM httpd
+MAINTAINER Brad Warren <bradmw@umich.edu>
+
+RUN mkdir /var/run/apache2 && \
+    ln -s /usr/local/apache2/conf/mime.types /etc/mime.types
+
+ENV APACHE_CONFDIR=/tmp/apache2 \
+    APACHE_RUN_USER=daemon \
+    APACHE_RUN_GROUP=daemon \
+    APACHE_PID_FILE=/var/run/apache2/apache2.pid \
+    APACHE_RUN_DIR=/var/run/apache2 \
+    APACHE_LOCK_DIR=/var/lock \
+    APACHE_LOG_DIR=/usr/local/apache2/logs 
+
+COPY a2enmod.sh /usr/local/bin/
+
+CMD [ "httpd-foreground" ]
diff --git a/tests/plugins/a2enmod.sh b/tests/plugins/a2enmod.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..9c36c44cc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/plugins/a2enmod.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+# An extremely simplified version of 'a2enmod' for the httpd docker image
+
+enable () {
+    echo "LoadModule "$1"_module /usr/local/apache2/modules/mod_"$1".so" >> \
+        $APACHE_CONFDIR"/modules.load"
+    available_base="/mods-available/"$1".conf"
+    available_conf=$APACHE_CONFDIR$available_base
+    enabled_dir=$APACHE_CONFDIR"/mods-enabled"
+    enabled_conf=$enabled_dir"/"$1".conf"
+    if [ -e "$available_conf" -a -e "$enabled_dir" -a ! -e "$enabled_conf" ]
+    then
+        ln -s "..$available_base" $enabled_conf
+    fi
+}
+
+if [ $1 == "ssl" ]
+then
+    # Enables ssl and all its dependencies
+    enable "setenvif"
+    enable "mime"
+    enable "socache_shmcb"
+    enable "ssl"
+elif [ $1 == "rewrite" ]
+then
+    enable "rewrite";
+else
+    exit 1;
+fi
diff --git a/tests/plugins/parser.py b/tests/plugins/parser.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..5946f15be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/plugins/parser.py
@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+"""Module for parsing command line arguments and config files."""
+import argparse
+
+
+DESCRIPTION = """
+Tests Let's Encrypt plugins against different web servers and configurations
+using Docker images. It is assumed that Docker is already installed.
+
+"""
+
+def parse_args():
+    """Returns parsed command line arguments."""
+    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=DESCRIPTION)
+
+    add_args(parser)
+    args = parser.parse_args()
+
+    if args.redirect:
+        args.names = True
+        args.install = True
+    elif args.install:
+        args.names = True
+
+    return args
+
+
+def add_args(parser):
+    """Adds general/program wide arguments to the group."""
+    group = parser.add_argument_group("general")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-t", "--tar", default="configs.tar.gz",
+        help="a gzipped tarball containing server configurations")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-p", "--plugin", default="apache",
+        help="the plugin to be tested")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-n", "--names", action="store_true", help="tests installer's domain "
+        "name identification")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-a", "--auth", action="store_true", help="tests authenticators")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-i", "--install", action="store_true", help="tests installer's "
+        "certificate installation (implicitly includes -d)")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "-r", "--redirect", action="store_true", help="tests installer's "
+        "redirecting HTTP to HTTPS (implicitly includes -di)")
+    group.add_argument(
+        "--no-simple-http-tls", action="store_true", help="do not use TLS "
+        "when solving SimpleHTTP challenges")
diff --git a/tests/plugins/test.py b/tests/plugins/test.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..3fe5e33a3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/plugins/test.py
@@ -0,0 +1,13 @@
+"""Tests Let's Encrypt plugins against different server configurations."""
+import parser
+import util
+
+
+def main():
+    """Main test script execution."""
+    args = parser.parse_args()
+
+    print util.setup_tmp_dir(args.tar)
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main() 
diff --git a/tests/plugins/util.py b/tests/plugins/util.py
new file mode 100644
index 000000000..07b47cb25
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/plugins/util.py
@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+"""Utility functions for Let's Encrypt plugin tests."""
+import os
+import tarfile
+import tempfile
+
+
+TEMP_DIRECTORY = tempfile.mkdtemp()
+# Location of decompressed server root configurations
+CONFIGS = os.path.join(TEMP_DIRECTORY, "configs")
+SCRIPTS = os.path.join(TEMP_DIRECTORY, "scripts")
+
+
+def setup_tmp_dir(tar_path):
+    """Sets up a temporary directory for this run and returns its path."""
+    tar = tarfile.open(tar_path, "r:gz")
+    tar.extractall(os.path.join(tmp_dir, SERVER_ROOTS))
+
+    os.makedirs(os.path.join(tmp_dir, "mnt"))
+    os.makedirs(os.path.join(tmp_dir, "scripts"))
+
+    return tmp_dir