ManageWP vs MainWP: an honest comparison
A side-by-side comparison of the two most established WordPress management tools, written without either of them as the answer. We make a competing product, so read this knowing that, and check the vendor sites before you commit.
Verified August 2026 against public documentation. Reviewed quarterly.
The short answer
Choose ManageWP if you want something that works immediately with nothing to maintain, you are managing a modest number of sites, and you would rather pay for capability than run infrastructure. Its free tier covering unlimited sites for basic updates is genuinely the best free offer in the category.
Choose MainWP if you have a large portfolio where per-site fees become significant, you have strict requirements about third parties holding access to client sites, or you want to modify the tool. It is open source and self-hosted, and both of those are real advantages if you can operate them properly.
The decision comes down to one question: do you want to own the infrastructure or rent it? Everything else follows from that answer.
Where they are genuinely similar
Both cover the same core ground competently: connecting many WordPress sites, bulk updating core, plugins and themes, one-click login, backups in some form, and basic client reporting. Both have been developed for over a decade and both have substantial user bases. If your requirement is simply centralised updating, either will do the job and the differences below will not affect you much.
They also share the same significant limitation. Neither verifies an update beyond applying it. There is no risk assessment before the change, no visual or functional testing afterwards, and no automatic rollback when something breaks. Both can take a backup first, which helps you recover, but recovery still depends on somebody noticing.
Side by side
| Capability | ManageWP | MainWP |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | Hosted SaaS | Self-hosted plugin |
| Pricing model | Free core plus per-site add-ons | Free core plus paid extensions |
| Per-site subscription fee | Yes, for add-ons | No |
| Infrastructure you maintain | None | Dashboard site and hosting |
| Open source | No | Yes |
| Bulk core, plugin and theme updates | Yes | Yes |
| Safe update verification | No | No |
| Automatic rollback | No | No |
| Backups | Paid add-on | Extension plus your own storage |
| Restore testing | No | No |
| Security and vulnerability monitoring | Paid add-on | Extension |
| Uptime monitoring | Paid add-on | Extension, from your dashboard |
| Monitoring independent of your infrastructure | Yes | No |
| Performance monitoring | Paid add-on | Extension |
| White-label client reports | Paid add-on | Extension |
| Client portal | No | Partial via extension |
| Team roles | Basic | Yes |
| Data ownership | Vendor hosted | Fully yours |
Cost at different portfolio sizes
Headline pricing is misleading for both products, in opposite directions. ManageWP looks free and is not once you add backups, uptime monitoring, security checks and reports at a per-site rate. MainWP looks free and is not once you add several paid extensions plus hosting for the dashboard plus the hours you spend maintaining it.
A rough guide, and you should verify current pricing yourself:
- Under 10 sites: ManageWP is usually cheaper and simpler. The free tier may cover you entirely.
- 10 to 50 sites: Genuinely close. ManageWP with two or three add-ons and MainWP with two or three extensions land in a similar range. The tiebreaker is whether you want to run the dashboard.
- Over 50 sites: MainWP's licensing advantage becomes significant, provided you have the operational capability to run the dashboard well.
A third option, and our obvious bias
We build WPCentrify, so treat this section accordingly. The reason we built it is the limitation both products share: updates are applied without verification. If your concern is not centralising updates but avoiding the update that quietly breaks a client's checkout at 2am, neither ManageWP nor MainWP addresses that, and adding a second tool alongside them does not either.
If that is not your problem, the comparison above stands on its own and you should pick whichever suits your situation.
Common questions
Neither is better in the abstract. ManageWP is hosted, so there is nothing to maintain and monitoring keeps working when your own infrastructure has a problem, but capability arrives through per-site add-ons that compound as the portfolio grows. MainWP is self-hosted, so there is no per-site fee and your data never leaves your control, but the dashboard is a production WordPress site you now own, secure and back up. Choose ManageWP if you want low operational overhead. Choose MainWP if you want ownership and have the capability to run it.
MainWP is usually cheaper in licensing at that scale because there is no per-site fee, though several paid extensions are typically needed for backups, monitoring and reports. ManageWP's cost depends heavily on which add-ons you enable and multiplies by site count. The honest comparison includes your own time maintaining the MainWP dashboard, which is a real cost that does not appear on an invoice.
It is a different risk profile. Self-hosting removes third-party access to your sites, which is a genuine benefit. It also concentrates connection keys for your entire portfolio into a single WordPress site that you are responsible for hardening, patching and monitoring. A well-maintained self-hosted dashboard is very secure; a neglected one is the most dangerous thing in the portfolio.
Neither performs risk scoring before an update, visual regression testing afterwards, or automatic rollback on failure. Both can take a backup before updating, which helps recovery but does not detect that anything broke. Detecting breakage remains manual in both products.
Technically yes, since the connectors do not conflict, but there is little reason to. They solve the same problem and running both doubles the maintenance surface without adding capability.
Considering a third option?
WPCentrify verifies every update before it reaches a live site and rolls it back automatically if a check fails. Free during early access.
Free during early access. Keep your data, export any time.