Managing multiple WordPress websites can make WordPress maintenance very tedious and repetitive.
Having to log in to every website to perform the same tasks is time-consuming and can be very unproductive, but what if I told you that there are tools out there that could make your job easier?
What is WordPress maintenance?
Performing WordPress site maintenance ensures that your website is secure, bug-free, and performing at optimal speeds for visitors. Core maintenance tasks include taking backups, running security and malware scans and keeping everything updated.
Let’s take a look at WordPress maintenance tools that can make managing multiple WordPress websites a breeze.
ManageWP
ManageWP is a hosted freemium service, now owned by GoDaddy, that allows you to manage multiple WordPress websites from a single dashboard.
Basic maintenance tasks such as core, theme and plugin updates are free. You also get a free monthly backup, performance scans, security monitoring, comment management and free client reporting.
Paid add-ons include daily backups, uptime monitoring, SEO ranking, advanced client reporting, automated security and performance checks, link monitoring and white-label options.
ManageWP charges for individual add-ons per website. Backups are $2 per website per month, and all other advanced features are $1 each. More on pricing here.
MainWP
MainWP is a freemium self-hosted WordPress management plugin that allows you to manage multiple WordPress websites directly from your WordPress dashboard.
The plugin allows you to connect to an unlimited number of websites and you can update, and manage themes, plugins, posts, pages and users all for free. You can also download free extensions for uptime monitoring, backups and security.
Advanced premium add-ons for MainWP which you can buy individually or as a bundle for $249 per year or $499 for a lifetime license includes site cloning, comment management, client reporting, lighthouse and page speed monitoring, analytics monitoring and white label.
MainWP has 42+ extensions available, 13+ are free and 29+ are premium.
WPRemote
WPRemote is a premium-hosted WordPress management dashboard that allows you to manage multiple WordPress websites.
WPRemote is far more expensive than its competitors but it offers advanced features that the rest don’t seem to have, most notably, staging and dev to live pushes, real-time backups and one-click malware removal.
Plans start from $29 per month for 5 websites and include bulk updates, client reporting, plugin, theme and user management, uptime monitoring and daily backups.
For advanced features like malware scans, one-click malware removal, firewall, visual regression tests and a white label plugin you have to upgrade to the Plus plan which costs $29 per month.
InfiniteWP
InfiniteWP is similar to MainWP in that it’s free and is self-hosted. However, InfiniteWP has far fewer free features than MainWP and premium extension licenses are priced by the number of websites you will manage. The smallest plan, limited to 10 sites, starts at $147 annually.
The free version of InfiniteWP allows you to update and backup an unlimited number of WordPress websites.
Premium extensions include scheduled backups, cloud backups (AWS, Digital Ocean, Dropbox etc), website migration and staging, uptime monitoring, client reporting, post, page and comment management, link checker and security management.
UpdraftCentral
UpdraftCentral is a WordPress management tool developed by the same guys behind one of the most popular backup plugins, Updraft.
You can self-host UpdraftCentral or you can have it hosted with UpdraftPlus.com
They have a free plan which is limited to 5 websites and includes everything you would expect to see from a WordPress management platform. Their main focus though is backups, so you have multiple backup options, including internal backups, backups to their cloud storage and backups to external cloud services such as AWS, Digital Ocean, Backblaze, OneDrive and Google Cloud.