If you have a live WordPress site and want to make a major change such as applying new server configuration or redesigning, it is crucial enough to set your site to maintenance mode. Not only it lets your visitors know that your website is temporarily unavailable, but also good for SEO. If your website is set to maintenance mode, search engines will be notified that your website is currently down by returning the header code 503. This way, the SEO of your website will not be affected by the downtime during the maintenance period. We have collected the best WordPress maintenance plugins that you can use effortlessly to set your site to maintenance mode.
You might be wondering, is maintenance mode different from coming soon mode?
There are two key differences. First, you can implement the coming soon mode when your site is in the development process and not ready to be released yet. Conversely, maintenance mode can be implemented when your website has been released yet is being temporarily offline due to some factors as we mentioned earlier (server configuration and redesign).
Second. Setting your site into maintenance mode allows it to tell search engines that your site is temporarily down by sending a temporary maintenance response (HTTP 503). Search engines will get back to your site as it back online. Meanwhile, when you set your site to coming soon mode, it will tell search engines that everything is normal (meaning that search engines can index your site) by returning a response of HTTP 200.
What happens when your site is on the maintenance mode?
No one can access your WordPress site except the registered users if it is set to maintenance mode. WordPress itself has a built-in maintenance mode function. However, it works only when you are installing/updating themes, plugins, or WordPress core. You can add a new function (by editing the functions.php file of your theme) to enable the maintenance mode, but it takes much effort to customize the page. If all this seems too complicated and you want to make sure everything goes smoothly while applying changes to your WordPress site, you can sign up for a WordPress maintenance plan and leave it to professionals. This way, you can avoid the hassle and have the site back live in no time. Alternatively, you can use one of the WordPress maintenance plugins we have collected below.
Best WordPress maintenance plugins
1. Elementor
Elementor is a feature-rich page builder plugin. In addition to creating beautiful pages without coding, you can also use it to turn your WordPress site into maintenance mode when you want to redesign your site or make other major changes. But first, you need to create a page template that you want to use on the maintenance mode page. You don’t need to create the template from scratch as Elementor offers some premade templates you can choose from.
To set your website to maintenance mode using Elementor, you can go to Elementor -> Tools on your WordPress dashboard. You can then open the Maintenance Mode tab. In addition to maintenance mode, you can also turn your website into a coming soon mode. Elementor also allows you to set who can access your site once it is turned into maintenance mode. The feature to set maintenance mode is available on both Elementor Free and Elementor Pro.
2. Brizy
Same as Elementor, Brizy is also a feature-rich page builder plugin that comes with a very intuitive interface. Brizy also comes with a built-in feature to enable both maintenance mode and coming soon mode to your WordPress site. You can access this feature from the Settings page of Brizy. You can create a maintenance page in advance using the Brizy page builder before turning your site into a maintenance mode. You can elements like counter, countdown, form, button, image, and so on, depending on the version you use. Brizy is released as a freemium plugin and the feature to enable maintenance mode is available on both versions.
3. SeedProd
SeedProd is one of the most popular WordPress maintenance plugins with over 1 million active users. You can use it to create a very simple maintenance page to a stunning maintenance page with a complex design. When you set your website to maintenance mode using SeedProd, you will have a simple “Get Ready… Something Really Cool Is Coming Soon” headline by default. With a solid white background. You can change it with your own design with the SeedProd’s built-in design tool. Or, you can also import one of the offered design templates (available on the pro version).
Furthermore, SeedProd allows you to integrate your website with Google Analytics and email marketing tools like Mailchimp, AWeber, and so on. Here are some key features offered by SeedPro.
- Built-in design tool
- Email marketing integrations
- Google Analytics integrations
- Premade templates
- Subscriber management
- Unsplash image library
4. IgniteUp
You can also use IgniteUp to effortlessly set your WordPress site to maintenance mode. There are 5 beautiful templates you can choose from (more templates on the pro version). IgniteUp also allows you to set the user levels that can access your website once it goes offline. The built-in design tool of IgniteUp allows you to set things like background color, background image, font color, and link color. You can show elements like contact form and social media icons to your maintenance page. IgniteUp supports integration with Mailchimp and MailPoet.
5. Coming Soon and Maintenance by Colorlib
Colorlib is a WordPress theme developer. It also develops a plugin that allows you to set your WordPress site to maintenance mode easily. The Coming Soon and Maintenance by Colorlib plugin will turn your website into the offline mode right away once it’s installed and activated. To switch back to the online mode, you can simply disable the plugin. The plugin uses the WordPress theme customizer to customize the maintenance page.
There are 14 templates you can choose from. You can add a countdown timer and social media icons to your page. The Coming Soon and Maintenance by Colorlib is completely free to use. Although it is developed by Colorlib, it works on any theme.
6. WP Maintenance Mode
WP Maintenance Mode is a popular enough WordPress maintenance plugin with over 700,000 active users. This plugin is developed by Designmodo, an online tool to create newsletter templates. It has no fancy built-in design tool like Elementor or SeedProd, but you can edit the background of your maintenance page and the text color. The plugin also allows you to set the user levels on your website that can access your offline site. You can add the following elements to your page:
- Countdown timer
- Social media icons
- Email opt-in form
- Contact form
7. Fancy Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
Fancy Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode has one thing in common with Coming Soon and Maintenance by Colorlib. It also immediately turns your website into an offline mode once installed and activated. Also, the customization process of the maintenance page is done via WordPress theme customizer. This plugin offers fewer customization options. You can only change the background image. There is no option to use a solid color as the background or change the text color.
8. Coming soon and Maintenance mode
Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode is a feature-rich enough maintenance plugin. While the default the maintenance page offered by the plugin is beautiful enough, you can customize the page by changing the elements like logo, title, and background. You can also set the typography of the title and the message. However, to use all features, you need to upgrade to the pro version. Coming Soon and Maintenance Mode also supports integration with Mailchimp. The elements you can add to your maintenance page are:
- Countdown
- Progress bar
- Email opt-in form
- Social media icons
9. Rocket Maintenance Mode & Coming Soon Page
If you are looking for a maintenance plugin that allows you to add the progress page to the maintenance page, Rocket Maintenance Mode & Coming Soon Page might is the plugin you are looking for. In addition, you can also add other elements like email opt-in form, social media icons, countdown counter, and so on. Rocket Maintenance Mode & Comin Soon Page is actually a feature-rich maintenance plugin. However, when we tried it (on the Hello theme), it’s a bit unstable. Every time we clicked a tab on its settings page, we were always switched back to the first tab so that we couldn’t try more features.
10. Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
Despite its name, this plugin offers plenty enough features. First, it offers a bunch of templates to allow you to create a better-looking maintenance page. Second, it also comes with a built-in design tool where you can set things like background image, background color, typography (font size, font family, font style), text color, and so on. There is also an SEO settings section where you can add SEO title and SEO meta description. From this settings section, you can also integrate your site with Google Analytics and an option to let search engines to temporarily ignore your website. Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode supports integration with Mailchimp.
11. Under Construction
Under Construction is developed by the same developer as Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode — WebFactory. No wonder if they have similar features. Under Construction also offers a bunch of maintenance page templates you can choose from to create a beautiful maintenance page. Unlike Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode, Under Construction allows you to set the logged users to view your offline site based on the user level (role).
12. Maintenance
Maintenance is another WordPress maintenance plugin developed by WebFactory. The overall features offered this plugin are not much different from Under Construction and Minimal Comin Soon & Maintenance where you can set things like the background color, background image, typography, font color, and so on. Maintenance allows you to exclude certain pages and posts from the maintenance mode. You can enable a login form on the maintenance page to allow your registered users to access the site (by logging in).
The bottom line
Depending on your preference, if you prefer a maintenance plugin that offers full control over the design, Elementor is the best option. Being the most popular page builder plugin, Elementor has a very intuitive editor where you can control everything. Plus, you have over 90 design elements to design your page. Please note once again that maintenance mode is different from coming soon mode. You can implement maintenance mode if you want to make a certain change to a live website, not a website that is still under development.
