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8 min read the best WordPress maintenance mode plugin

Best WordPress maintenance mode plugin selection

Word­Press main­te­nance mode plu­g­in selec­tion is an addi­tion to the Word­Press main­te­nance mode com­plete guide we pub­lished a few weeks ago, and will be use­ful if you’ve decid­ed to use a plu­g­in when putting your web­site into main­te­nance mode. Read our detailed review of the best 11 main­te­nance mode, and “Com­ing Soon” page, plu­g­ins, and choose the one that best suits your needs.

Word­Press main­te­nance mode plu­g­in selec­tion is based on:

  • com­pat­i­bil­i­ty – only plu­g­ins com­pat­i­ble with the cur­rent lat­est Word­Press ver­sion (4.6.1) are included
  • pop­u­lar­i­ty
  • reviews and ratings
  • reg­u­lar­i­ty of updates

In this list, we have includ­ed 5 com­plete­ly free and 6 freemi­um plu­g­ins, rang­ing from very sim­ple and option-lim­it­ed plu­g­ins, to fea­ture-rich plu­g­ins, suit­able for main­te­nance mode, as well as a Com­ing Soon page. We have inten­tion­al­ly left out some of the more pop­u­lar plu­g­ins, because they are cur­rent­ly not com­pat­i­ble with the lat­est Word­Press version.

All plu­g­ins are installed and test­ed on a fresh Word­Press installation.

Free plugins

Under Construction by WebFactory

Under Con­struc­tion Page plu­g­in is easy to install and use, fea­ture-rich, and free. Instal­la­tion is very fast because the plu­g­in is quite small. Once installed you can acti­vate it by sim­ply switch­ing an on/off but­ton. There is an option of auto­mat­ic sched­ul­ing as well as adding a Google Ana­lyt­ics track­ing ID. The plu­g­in serves a 503-sta­tus to search engine bots while enabled, so they will not crawl the web­site while the plu­g­in is active.

There are 12 dif­fer­ent themes with nice illus­tra­tions to help choose, and new ones are added with each update. At the time of review­ing, there is no option to upload a cus­tom image, but there is a cus­tom CSS field for adding your own styles.

With this plu­g­in you can whitelist any Word­Press user roles, add dif­fer­ent SEO meta tags, and choose from 15 dif­fer­ent social and con­tact icons to dis­play at the bot­tom of the page.

The plu­g­in is very pop­u­lar, with over 50,000 active installs and a high aver­age rat­ing of 4,9 out of 5 stars, based on almost 300 ratings.

Find out more about the Under Con­struc­tion Page plugin

Maintenance Mode by Lukas Juhas

Main­te­nance Mode is a very sim­ple free plu­g­in, which uses Word­Press’ native core func­tion to quick­ly and effi­cient­ly make the web­site unavail­able for vis­i­tors. It does­n’t serve a 503-sta­tus to search engine bots, which means they are allowed to crawl the site while under­go­ing maintenance.

With this plu­g­in, you can write cus­tom con­tent and add images using a WYSIWYG edi­tor, just the same as when you are cre­at­ing any post or page. There are no oth­er options avail­able, but its sim­plic­i­ty makes it pop­u­lar and effec­tive. The plu­g­in has over 20,000 active installs and the high­est aver­age rat­ing of 5 out of 5 stars, based on 30 ratings.

Find out more about the Main­te­nance Mode plugin

WP Maintenance Mode by Designmodo

With over 400,000 installs, this is one of the most pop­u­lar main­te­nance mode plu­g­ins. It works as a main­te­nance mode, as well as a Com­ing Soon page. In main­te­nance mode, it serves a 503-sta­tus (Serv­er tem­porar­i­ly unavail­able) to search engine bots. If you choose to use the plu­g­in as a Com­ing Soon page, you only need to set “Bypass for Search Bots” to ‘No’ and search engine bots will be able to crawl the site, while reg­u­lar vis­i­tors will still see a Com­ing Soon page.

WP Main­te­nance Mode plu­g­in is com­plete­ly free and feature-rich.

Here are some of the options includ­ed with this plugin:

  • role-based access to fron­tend and back­end – while admin­is­tra­tors have full access to back­end and fron­tend, you can lim­it or allow access to oth­er roles
  • robots meta tag – you can con­trol if your web­site should be indexed and served in search results
  • exclude – you can exclude cus­tom pages or IPs from main­te­nance mode, (this option is very use­ful if you’ve changed the URL of the reg­u­lar WP login page)
  • cus­tom back­ground col­or or image, plus basic text styling
  • count­down with a live timer
  • sub­scriber box for col­lect­ing emails
  • 7 dif­fer­ent social net­work icons
  • con­tact us but­ton with a light­box con­tact form pop-up
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics track­ing code
  • works with Word­Press Multisite

WP Main­te­nance Mode has 4 out of 5 stars. The major­i­ty of reviews are very pos­i­tive, with 4- and 5‑star rat­ing but there are also 20% neg­a­tive, 1‑star rat­ings com­plain­ing about spam or the plu­g­in not work­ing. We haven’t noticed any issues while per­form­ing our tests.

Find out more about WP Main­te­nance Mode plugin

Launchpad Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode Plugin

This plu­g­in has more than 8,000 active installs and an aver­age 4,6 out of 5 stars rat­ing. It works best as a Com­ing Soon page, since there is no option to switch between serv­er sta­tus­es. How­ev­er, you can use it for main­te­nance mode, if you don’t mind search engine bots crawl­ing your web­site while under maintenance.

The plu­g­in is com­plete­ly free to use, very easy to con­fig­ure, and has many dif­fer­ent fea­tures available:

  • a cus­tom tagline, title and intro­duc­tion copy
  • 3 dif­fer­ent templates
  • drag & drop page ele­ment order
  • auto­mat­ic launch date
  • intro video URL
  • newslet­ter embed code for a sign-up box
  • foot­er copy­right text
  • min­i­mum user role for fron­tend access (admin­is­tra­tor is default)
  • 5 social media buttons
  • cus­tom CSS box

Find out more about Launch­pad Com­ing Soon & Main­te­nance Mode Plugin

Under Construction/ Maintenance Mode from Acurax

Acu­rax Com­ing Soon/Maintenance plu­g­in is a fea­ture rich and com­plete­ly free plu­g­in. It is trust­ed by more than 60,000 Word­Press users, and has an aver­age rat­ing 4.7 out of 5 stars, based on 80 ratings.

One of the coolest fea­tures is a pri­vate access URL set­ting. You can set­up a cus­tom URL to show the web­site to your client, while it’s still in main­te­nance mode for all vis­i­tors. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there is no sta­tus-switch­ing option – the plu­g­in always serves a 503-sta­tus so it’s maybe not the best choice if you’d like to enable crawl­ing while the web­site is under construction.

The plu­g­in offers 10 dif­fer­ent tem­plates, with cus­tom back­ground and logo set­tings. Some oth­er inter­est­ing fea­tures are:

  • auto-launch option
  • mail­ing list building
  • count­down timer
  • cus­tom access/restriction set­tings (IP or role based)
  • pri­vate access URL settings
  • SEO con­fig­u­ra­tion
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics track­ing code
  • cus­tom HTML and CSS

Find out more about Under Construction/ Main­te­nance Mode from Acurax

Simple Maintenance

The Sim­ple Main­te­nance mode plu­g­in does exact­ly what its name says: puts your web­site in main­te­nance mode while the plu­g­in is acti­vat­ed. It serves a 503-sta­tus to search engines and offers a clean lay­out with no cus­tomiza­tion options. It’s a light­weight plu­g­in cre­at­ed with HTML5 ful­ly respon­sive design.

Find out more about Sim­ple Main­te­nance plugin

Freemium plugins

Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode by SeedProd

This is the high­est rat­ed Main­te­nance Mode and Com­ing Soon Page plu­g­in with 5 of 5 stars, based on almost 90 rat­ings and more than 200,000 installs. This plu­g­in is mobile-ready, and has rich fea­tures even in its free ver­sion. How­ev­er, if you want to col­lect emails or build an awe­some Com­ing Soon page, you will have to buy the pre­mi­um ver­sion. The price ranges from $29 for a sin­gle site license, up to $199 for unlim­it­ed sites.

The plu­g­in serves prop­er serv­er sta­tus­es: 503 while in main­te­nance, 200 as a Com­ing Soon page.

Free ver­sion features:

  • logo and favicon
  • basic design con­trols; cus­tom head­line and mes­sage styling
  • cus­tom back­ground col­or or image
  • respon­sive design
  • cus­tom CSS and HTML, head­er and foot­er scripts
  • SEO title and meta description
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics code box

Pre­mi­um ver­sion has advanced design, email mar­ket­ing, access and social media features…almost any­thing you can think of for a main­te­nance mode plugin.

Find out more about Com­ing Soon & Main­te­nance Mode by Seed­Prod plugin

Maintenance Mode by Muneeb

Main­te­nance Mode plu­g­in, in its free ver­sion, always serves a 200-serv­er sta­tus, so it’s more suit­able for a Com­ing Soon page than main­te­nance mode. It has over 30,000 installs and is rat­ed high­ly with 4.7 out of 5 stars, based on 17 rat­ings. Though the progress bar looks cool, for more advanced options you will have to buy a pre­mi­um sub­scrip­tion for $23.

Free options

  • progress bar
  • logo and favicon
  • cus­tom head­line and tagline, cus­tom col­ors, basic styling mes­sage options
  • back­ground color
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics code
  • social media icons: Face­book, Twit­ter, LinkedIn, Pin­ter­est, Instagram
  • cus­tom CSS

Premium options

  • pre­view link
  • count­down timer
  • sub­scribe form
  • back­ground image, link col­ors, Google fonts
  • SEO title and meta description
  • 5 cus­tom themes
  • MailChimp inte­gra­tion
  • head­er and foot­er script
  • user roles

Find out more about Main­te­nance Mode

Easy Maintenance Mode by Ankit

Easy Main­te­nance Mode has 4.3 out of 5 stars, based on 18 rat­ings and 9,000 installs. It serves a 503-sta­tus to search engine bots and though it has some advanced fea­tures in Pro ver­sion, its pri­ma­ry use is for main­te­nance mode.

  • cus­tom head­line and descrip­tion – font, col­or, and size
  • back­ground col­or or image
  • track­ing code field
  • Face­book, Twit­ter and Google+ icons
  • Pro ver­sion fea­tures: 4 tem­plates, email cap­ture and newslet­ter inte­gra­tion, respon­sive design, more design set­tings, 10+ social media icons, mul­ti­site sup­port, user and IP whitelist
  • Pro ver­sion: sin­gle site $29, unlim­it­ed sites $59

Find out more about Easy Main­te­nance Mode

Maintenance by Fruitful Code

Anoth­er very use­ful and fea­ture-rich freemi­um plu­g­in with over 300,000 active installs, and an aver­age rat­ing of 4.4 out of 5 stars, based on more than 150 rat­ings. Most of the 1‑star rat­ings are over a year old, which means they are fix­ing the issues with reg­u­lar updates.

Free ver­sion features:

  • reg­u­lar and reti­na logo upload
  • cus­tom page title, head­line, and description
  • dif­fer­ent fonts and font color
  • cus­tom back­ground col­or or image
  • 503-serv­er sta­tus switch
  • cus­tom posts and pages exclusion
  • Google Ana­lyt­ics ID
  • cus­tom CSS

Pro ver­sion is avail­able for $15 and offers extend­ed functionality:

  • full-screen HD back­ground gallery with video
  • sched­uler count­down with 3 dif­fer­ent counter types
  • HTML pop-up
  • mail­ing list sub­scrip­tion – MailChimp and Cam­paign Mon­i­tor integration
  • 5+ social media icons
  • user roles and permissions

Find out more about Main­te­nance plugin

Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode by WpDevArt

Com­ing Soon and Main­te­nance mode plu­g­in has over 40,000 active installs, and an aver­age rat­ing of 4.3 out of 5 stars. A high per­cent­age of bad rat­ings, almost 20%, come from 1‑star rat­ings, from users most­ly com­plain­ing about lim­it­ed fea­tures includ­ed in the free version.

When acti­vat­ed and enabled, the plu­g­in only serves a 200-sta­tus, which allows search engine bots to crawl the website.

While the plu­g­in is very easy to install and con­fig­ure, it offers only basic design and styling options: you can upload your logo, choose a cus­tom back­ground col­or or image, and write your own title and mes­sage. The free ver­sion also includes 5 social media but­tons, cus­tom pages, IP exclu­sion, and decent SEO options.

The Pro ver­sion offers advanced styling options, a live timer and a progress bar, advanced email sub­scrip­tion options, and cus­tom images upload for social networks.

The Pro ver­sion price range goes from $14 for a sin­gle site license, up to $50 for unlim­it­ed sites.

Find out more about Com­ing Soon and Main­te­nance mode

Site Offline or Coming Soon

Site Offline or Com­ing Soon is a sim­ple freemi­um plu­g­in, suit­able only for users famil­iar with HTML and CSS, in its free version.

Paid ver­sion, for $19,99, offers more options:

  • advanced design and styling options
  • auto­mat­ic countdown
  • mail­ing list build­ing with MailChimp integration
  • respon­sive lay­out with reti­na ready
  • 10+ social media icons

This plu­g­in has more than 40,000 active installs, and an aver­age rat­ing of 4.1 out of 5 stars, based on 20+ rat­ings. 1‑star rat­ings are all over a year old, so they’ve prob­a­bly fixed all the issues in new­er updates.

Find out more about Site Offline or Com­ing Soon plu­g­in.

We hope you’ve found this arti­cle use­ful. For more infor­ma­tion on Word­Press main­te­nance, check out our Main­te­nance cat­e­go­ry page.

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