If you already have a website, you probably don’t have many issues managing it. However, if you increase this number to 3 or 5, then you will probably discover how time consuming it is to manage multiple WordPress sites. Just switching from one website to another takes time, not to mention the routine updating of themes, plugins and WordPress itself, as well as time-consuming tasks like security scans and backup.

The good news is that there are lots of tools that can simplify the process of managing multiple WordPress sites. In this article we will review tools that can be used to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single hub. Rather than just functioning as a CLI that can also be used to manage different websites, all these tools have an admin dashboard and intuitive design. Please note that we are not talking about WordPress Multisite, which can be managed from the network admin. Our focus here is on managing multiple WordPress sites with different domains hosted on different hosting platforms.

MainWP

MainWP is a popular free plugin that allows you to manage all your WordPress websites from a single dashboard. MainWP has two plugins, one for the dashboard and another for connecting sites to your dashboard.  In order to connect all your sites to the dashboard, you need to install the MainWP worker plugin on your site and perform a simple connection instruction.

From the MainWP dashboard you can do pretty much everything that is necessary to manage multiple WordPress sites, from one-click install to all updates for plugins, themes, and WordPress core files. It’s also possible to moderate comments on all of your websites, which will really save you time.

Besides the features mentioned above, you can also use MainWP to monitor site health and uptime and manage WordPress users and content, which includes working with pages, posts and more.

MainWP offers free plans for any amount of sites, but they also have paid plans that contain all their add-ons. MainWP add-ons can greatly extend the functionality of site management, so if you don’t want to buy the Pro plan you can buy the extensions you need.

The Pro plan starts from $29 per month.

ManageWP

ManageWP is a classic name in the market. This popular WordPress site management tool is created to save management time by automating the workflow. This is a free management tool that can easily manage an entire army of WordPress websites from a single dashboard.

ManageWP comes with such great features as:

• Updates –  Update all your websites with one click, including theme, plugins and WordPress core
• Backups – ManageWP has a great tool to automatically create a scheduled backup of your site, an essential step in any project, and offers free cloud backup
• Google Analytics –  Use analytics to track your site results
• 1-click Login – Jump into any network site dashboard with just one click
• Manage Plugins & Themes – Bulk install, update, deactivate, delete or install any previous version of plugins and themes
• Collaboration – Give access to the dashboard to your team member or client
• Vulnerability Updates – Get the latest information about vulnerable plugins in your network
• Manage Comments – Manage all the comments in your network
  And more!

ManageWP also offers premium add-ons if you can’t find a particular feature in the free version. The free version works for an unlimited number of sites, with premium add-ons starting from $1 per site.

BlogVault

BlogVault is another important competitor in the WordPress site management business. While it can provide similar features to many other such plugins and may seem like a backup solution at first glance, if you browse it further you will discover it is the ultimate WordPress management tool.

BlogVault features include:

• 1-Click Update Everything – View all pending updates throughout your sites and manage them all together 
• Backup Restore – Incremental cloud backups with fail-proof restores and a 100% success rate
• Security – Firewall, deep scan and clean, and a 360º security solution – just set it and forget it!
• Staging Environment – 1-Click Integrated Staging for all sites

BlogVault pricing starts from $7 per month.

WPMU Dev Hub

WPMU Dev Hub is a well-known name in the WordPress marketplace. Their plugins are widely used to manage multiple WordPress sites, making this a solid company with a good reputation.

Selecting WPMU Dev Hub as a solution for managing multiple sites saves you a lot of time. Their user friendly and minimalistic dashboard design makes management easy even for novice WordPress users. Adding a new site in the hub is made possible by installing the WPMU DEV dashboard plugin or by manually entering site credentials in the main dashboard.

Features that are worth mentioning:

• Updates – Monitor pending updates on your network and perform them from one dashboard
• Performance – Run page speed tests, check response times and get insight on the performance of your site
• Security – Monitor the security of your site from the hub, run scheduled scans and get an overview of security issues, suggestions and tweaks
• Backups – Schedule and manage backups, restore backups at any given time
• SEO – Run an SEO health check and get an overview of how your site is measuring up
• Statistic – Monitor your site in real time with  simple and intuitive analytics, plus the option to set up different alerts

Besides the above-mentioned features you can also add colleagues or clients to your dashboard hub to share some insights or the status of the tasks.

Pricing for this all-in-one solution in WPMU Dev Hub starts from $15.83.

Conclusion

Managing multiple WordPress sites is normal nowadays, but we need to focus on website content and not get carried away with performing routine tasks. I hope this article did the job and now you know which tool is right for you to manage multiple WordPress websites from a single admin panel.