Never lose a site to a certificate nobody was watching
Certificates and domain registrations expire on their own schedule, usually while nobody is looking, and the failure is immediate and public. A lapsed certificate does not degrade gracefully. It puts a full-page browser warning in front of every visitor, and the client finds out before you do.
Siteward reads each site’s certificate and domain registration on a rolling schedule through the day and raises a flag with enough lead time to renew calmly, rather than at 11pm after a phone call. It is the expiry line of the agency security checklist, watched for you across every site.
What gets checked
- SSL certificate expiry, per site, read directly from the certificate the site serves rather than from a local record that can drift out of date.
- Domain registration expiry, read from the public registration record, so a renewal that failed on an expired company card surfaces before the domain lapses.
- Both surface as flags on the fleet dashboard: SSL expiring, SSL expired and Domain expiring, with an email the first time one appears.
One limit worth knowing: some country-code domains do not publish an expiry date in the public registration record Siteward reads. Sites on those domains get certificate monitoring but no domain-expiry flag.
Why lead time is the whole feature
Knowing a certificate expired is not useful. Knowing it expires in seventeen days is. The value here is entirely in the warning window: long enough to raise an invoice, chase a client for card details, or fix an auto-renewal that has quietly been failing for three months.
By default a certificate is flagged 14 days before it expires and a domain 30 days before. Both windows are settings, so you can widen them to match how slowly your clients answer email.
An honest note on MainWP
MainWP offers SSL and domain-expiry monitoring in its free tier. In Siteward this is a Pro feature. On this specific point MainWP is more generous, and if certificate monitoring is the only thing you need, that is worth knowing before you choose.
If you are on Pro for other reasons, such as fleet plugin management, dynamic tags or client reports, expiry monitoring comes with it at no extra cost. How the two tools compare as a whole is on the MainWP alternative page.
What it costs
SSL and domain monitoring is part of Pro. Pro is $129 a year, or $399 once for lifetime, and covers unlimited sites: one flat price for unlimited sites. There is no per-site fee at any tier, so the cost of monitoring certificates across 40 client sites is the same as across four. That is the point of a tool built for agencies.
Common questions
How far ahead does Siteward warn me?
By default, 14 days before a certificate expires and 30 days before a domain registration does. Both windows are settings, and an email goes out the first time a flag appears.
Does this cover domain registration as well as SSL?
Yes. Both the certificate and the domain registration are checked, because either lapsing takes the site down. Some country-code domains do not publish an expiry date in the public registration record, and sites on those get certificate monitoring only.
Is SSL monitoring included in the free plan?
No. SSL and domain-expiry monitoring is a Pro feature. Pro is $129 a year or $399 for lifetime, covering unlimited sites.
How does this compare to MainWP?
MainWP includes SSL and domain-expiry monitoring in its free tier, where Siteward makes it a Pro feature. If expiry monitoring is the only thing you need, MainWP is the cheaper answer.
Unlimited sites free. Pro from $129/yr, or $399 once.