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The lean alternative to MainWP & ManageWP v0.7.19

Manage unlimited WordPress sites from one lean dashboard.

Uptime monitoring, fleet-wide updates, backup checks and critical-error alerts for hundreds of sites, without the bloat or the per-site fees. Self-hosted, secure, and built to scale.

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No per-site fees · No credit card · Connect your first site in 2 minutes
All systems up
213 / 213 online
164 need attention
331 updates pending
wp-admin / siteward / sites
Siteward dashboard listing managed WordPress sites with uptime status and health flags
BUILT FOR AGENCIES MANAGING WORDPRESS AT SCALE Unlimited sites, free Self-hosted No per-site fees ★★★★★ on WordPress.org
REVIEWS ON WORDPRESS.ORG
“The interface is clean and snappy, tracking updates, SSL status, and core health across multiple servers without the bloat typical of competing dashboard tools. What really sets Siteward apart, though, is the exceptional personal support. … Siteward Pro has saved me hours of administrative maintenance, and Jason’s support makes it an easy 5-star recommendation.”
chrisl300 Engineer, 20+ client sites ★★★★★Read the review
“We’ve struggled to find a tool that helps us properly manage our clients’ sites, having trialled MainWP, WP Umbrella and ManageWP, all of which fell short of the mark. Jason at Siteward is responsive to feedback and actually uses the tool regularly, so it keeps improving as the feature set gets richer. I’d recommend Siteward to any agency or freelancer that looks after multiple client sites.”
Ben Elwood Agency owner ★★★★★Read the review
WHY AGENCIES SWITCH

The pain of managing WordPress at scale

The tools meant to help end up charging per site, slowing to a crawl, and going quiet exactly when something breaks. Siteward fixes the parts that actually hurt.

$

Per-site fees that punish growth

Cloud tools charge ~$1–$2 per site per month for each add-on, backups, monitoring, reporting. At 200 sites that’s thousands a year.

Siteward: unlimited sites free, and Pro is one flat price. No per-site fees, ever.

⚡

Dashboards that crawl at scale

Other managers bog down past ~100 sites, slow admin pages, manual “sync” buttons, special tuning just to stay usable.

Siteward: a parallel engine checks your whole fleet in seconds, fast at 200+ out of the box.

⤓

Backups that fail silently

Backups quietly stop working and you only find out when a restore fails, the worst possible moment.

Siteward: backup status at a glance with flags for missing, stale and failing backups, before you need them.

⚠

Updates that break sites silently

A routine plugin update triggers a white screen or fatal error, and nobody notices until the client calls.

Siteward: detects critical errors and auto-paused plugins within minutes, and tells you which one broke.

Stop paying by the site.

Per-site tools get more expensive with every client you win. Siteward doesn’t.

$5,000–$21,000/yr
200 sites on per-site cloud tools*
VS
$129/yr
200 sites on Siteward Agency, flat

*Based on published per-site add-on pricing (~$1–$9/site/month). Basic monitoring on Siteward is free at any number of sites.

EVERYTHING, NOTHING MORE

The essentials done properly

Every feature earns its place. No dashboards full of things you’ll never use.

Solid uptime monitoring

Parallel checks across your whole fleet, retry-then-alert to avoid false alarms, and instant notifications by email and Zapier, free on every site.

Fleet-wide updates

See every pending core, plugin and theme update in one place. Select sites and bulk-update, by plugin or by site, with live progress.

Vulnerability monitoring

See every plugin, theme and core version with a known vulnerability across the whole fleet, with the version that fixes it. Free, no API key, and nothing about your sites leaves your server.

Critical-error detection

Catch fatal errors, white screens and auto-paused plugins within minutes, and see exactly which plugin or theme broke the site.

Backup visibility

UpdraftPlus status at a glance, with flags for missing, stale or failing backups before they become a problem.

Secure & self-hosted

Runs on your own server. Each site is linked with an OpenSSL keypair and every request is signed, your data never routes through a third party.

Built for scale

A parallel engine checks and updates hundreds of sites in seconds, not minutes, with concurrency you control.

Tags & segmentation

Label sites by client or server, filter the fleet and scope bulk actions, so you can update everything except the sites you tag “do not touch”.

SITEWARD VS THE REST

Leaner than MainWP.
Cheaper than ManageWP.

MainWP is powerful but adds up in paid extensions and slows down at scale. ManageWP charges per site for the features you actually need. Siteward keeps it flat, fast and self-hosted.

MainWP SELF-HOSTED
✓Self-hosted, mature, huge extension catalogue
−Paid extensions stack up
−Drags past ~100 sites without tuning
ManageWP CLOUD
✓Polished, includes cloud backups
−Per site, per add-on, every month
−Your client data lives on their cloud
Siteward FLAT
✓Unlimited sites free, Pro one flat price
✓Parallel engine, fast at 200+ by default
✓Self-hosted, and names the plugin that broke a site
UP AND RUNNING FAST

Three steps to a managed fleet

1

Install the dashboard

Install the free Siteward plugin from WordPress.org on one central WordPress site, your control panel.

2

Connect your sites

Install the lightweight Siteward Child plugin on each site and paste its secure connection key.

3

Monitor & update

Watch uptime, run bulk updates, and get alerted the moment something needs you.

Hundreds of sites.
Seconds, not minutes.

Siteward checks and updates your fleet in parallel through a curl_multi engine, so adding more sites doesn’t slow you down.

200+
sites per dashboard
~10s
to check a full fleet
$0
per site, on every plan
ON THE ROADMAP

What’s coming next

We’re building the highest-impact requests from agencies, openly.

NEXT UP AI · PRO ADD-ON

ChatGPT & claude.ai sign-in for AI assistants

Connect ChatGPT and claude.ai, which sign in with OAuth, alongside the desktop clients that use an application password today. Built and in final testing.

NEXT UP FLEET

Export sites & a dashboard summary

Download your whole fleet as a spreadsheet, and see sites down, needing attention and updates waiting right on your WordPress dashboard.

PLANNED UPDATES

Skip an update

Hold a specific plugin or theme version on one site or across the fleet, for the ones you keep pinned on purpose.

PLANNED INSIGHTS

Fleet stats

Updates applied, broken updates rolled back, outages caught and the time it all saved you, for this month and all time.

PLANNED BACKUPS

More backup providers

Backup monitoring beyond UpdraftPlus, for popular plugins like BackWPup, WPvivid and Duplicator. Sites with server-level backups can already be marked as covered.

PLANNED BACKUPS · PRO ADD-ON

Backups to your own server

An optional add-on for agencies without a backup tool: schedule backups of files and database from the dashboard, sent over SFTP to a server you choose, with one-click restore.

PLANNED SEO · SEOWARD

Broken links & SEO health with SEOWard

Sites running our SEOWard plugin report broken links, 404s and missing titles to your dashboard, so you see SEO health across the fleet and fix it in one place.

SHIPPED · NOV 2026 UPDATES · PRO

Visual update checks

Every site’s key pages compared after each update, with before and after screenshots, so a broken layout is flagged even when the site still loads. Read the release post.

SHIPPED · NOV 2026 PERFORMANCE · PRO

Performance & PageSpeed scores

Weekly mobile and desktop PageSpeed scores for every site, sortable on the Sites page and shown in your client reports.

SHIPPED · NOV 2026 SECURITY

Unsupported PHP & outdated WordPress warnings

Flags every site on a PHP version that no longer gets security fixes, warns months before PHP 8.2 support ends, and spots WordPress installs that have fallen behind.

SHIPPED · OCT 2026 UPDATES

Safe updates & one-click rollback

Every plugin and theme update is saved first and put back automatically if it breaks the site. Free, with one-click rollback from the dashboard in Pro.

SHIPPED · OCT 2026 CLIENTS · PRO

Client details & reminders

Keep each client’s contact details and what they pay with their site, and get reminded before hosting, domain or licence renewals fall due.

SHIPPED · SEP 2026 AI · PRO ADD-ON

MCP connector for AI assistants

Connect Claude, Cursor or any MCP client to your dashboard once. Ask which sites need attention or what changed this month, and let it use the abilities your sites allow, with changes only where you allow them. Included with Pro.

SHIPPED · AUG 2026 SECURITY

Fleet vulnerability monitoring

Every vulnerable plugin, theme and core version across all sites, checked against a feed of nearly 39,000 known vulnerabilities, with a warning on each site’s own Plugins screen. Free, no API key, and the matching happens on your own server.

SHIPPED · AUG 2026 REPORTING

White-label client reports

Branded monthly reports so your maintenance work is visible, and your care plans stick. Included with Pro, no per-site fee.

SHIPPED · JUL 2026 UPDATES

Fleet plugin management

Install, update, activate, deactivate or uninstall plugins across exactly the sites you filter to, by tag, status or plugin, with a review before every action.

SHIPPED · JUN 2026 SECURITY

SSL & domain expiry alerts

Watches every certificate and domain registration and alerts you days before either lapses.

Missing something? Tell us what to build next. Suggest a feature
QUESTIONS

Frequently asked

What is Siteward?

A lean, self-hosted WordPress multi-site management tool, a MainWP and ManageWP alternative, that lets agencies monitor uptime, run fleet-wide core, plugin and theme updates, and catch critical errors across unlimited sites from one dashboard.

Is Siteward a good MainWP alternative?

Yes. Siteward offers the same core idea, manage many WordPress sites from one self-hosted dashboard, but deliberately stripped of bloat, with a parallel engine that stays fast at scale and no paid-extension sprawl.

Does Siteward charge per site?

Never. Unlimited sites are free, and Pro is one flat price, unlike per-site cloud tools that bill ~$1–$2 per site per month for each feature.

Where is my data stored?

Entirely on your own dashboard site. Siteward is self-hosted; there’s no third-party cloud in the middle. Sites connect over signed, encrypted requests.

Will it tell me when an update breaks a site?

Yes. Siteward detects HTTP 5xx errors, WordPress’s “critical error” white screen, recovery mode, and auto-paused plugins, and alerts you by email or Zapier, naming the culprit.

UNLIMITED SITES · FREE TO START

See it on your own sites.

Monitor unlimited sites free, or start a 14-day trial of Pro and connect your first site in minutes.