53
Maintenance
Simple setup meets the terrifying possibility of a permanent maintenance mode.
GrowingPoor rating
53/100
Reliability issues and aggressive activation make this simple tool a risky choice for many users.
Active installs
~1.5 million
our estimate · wp.org shows 1.0M+
Rating
4.5★
847 ratings
Trend · vs a year ago
+39%
Growing fast
3,720 → 5,176 installs/day
What to watch out for
- MAJORverified rating is 3.37★
Downloads over time
real new installs per day · release spikes shown separately from the trend2025-04-302025-08-082025-11-162026-02-232026-06-03
organicrelease spikerelease tailorganic trend · 14d rolling median
Growing fast · +39% in the last year
3,720/day a year ago→5,176/day today
Reviews
what people actually sayMaintenance is a simple, easy-to-set-up maintenance mode plugin with a loyal base of long-term users, but it is undermined by recurring reliability failures, an aggressive default-on activation behavior, and key features locked behind a paywall.
What people like
- +Easy to set up and activate/deactivate for basic maintenance mode use×5
- +Reliable for some users across many sites over a long period×2
- +Exclusion feature allows specific pages to remain accessible while maintenance mode is active
- +Support forum is responsive
Common complaints
- −Plugin activates maintenance mode immediately upon installation, blocking the live site before the user has configured anything×2
- −Maintenance mode sometimes fails to activate at all — site remains fully accessible despite the plugin being enabled×3
- −Maintenance mode can become impossible to deactivate, trapping the site in a broken state×2
- −Key design/theme features are paywalled, with upsell prompts appearing after installation despite being advertised as free×2
- −No support provided for free-tier users by the developer
- −Blocks API requests when active
- −Visual and layout bugs reported: ignores page title field, crops and darkens background images, editor layout breaks into two columns with no way to revert×2
- −No JavaScript support, limiting customization of the maintenance page
- −Settings and content (e.g. multilingual pages) can be lost with no history or recovery option
Review trustReviews look organic
- 3.37★Verified rating — holds steady vs the raw 4.50★
- 10%One-shot reviewers — most reviewers are active community members
Reviews per month · 5★ vs lower
2023-09-182025-02-092026-06-04
5★ reviews1–4★ reviews
All-time ratings · 847 total
Latest reviews · 90 analyzed
- 2026-03-24★★★★★The free plugin is not working properly.hemofix
- 2026-03-13★★★★★Great plugin with lots of potentialwebtest19
- 2026-03-11★★★★★Easy Maintenance Modeaysia00
- 2026-02-15★★★★★spam !!chinouk35
- 2026-02-05★★★★★Doesn't work.DavideBianchini
- 2026-01-12★★★★★Nice plugin, but…jayjay1602
- 2026-01-04★★★★★Great plugin. Easy to usejen000
- 2025-12-12★★★★★Doesn't workocultmag1-shot
- 2025-11-14★★★★★Doesn't workashworks11-shot
- 2025-11-10★★★★★Excellent PluginUseful Tech Stuff
Releases
recent versions from WordPress.org SVNFor developers & the curious
the raw signals behind the grade — none of this is on the friendly summary aboveDownload signals
Baselines are computed on organic days only — release spikes and their tails are excluded, so they're not inflated by the auto-update wave.
4,745
Baseline · median of last 7 organic days
5,052
Prior 7-day baseline
3,456
Floor · 25th percentile over 14 days
23,124
Mean release-day peak (30d)
5,253
Latest day · 2026-06-03(organic)
-6.1%
Week-over-week organic trend
Review signals
Concentration and drive-by metrics drive the review-burst and fake-review flags. 30–40% solo reviewers is normal; we only flag the extremes.
8%
Max month share · biggest single 30-day window
0.79
Distribution CV · <0.6 even, >1.5 bursty
46%
5★ share in analyzed sample
10%
Solo reviewers · only this one wp.org activity
0%
Volume velocity · last 6mo vs prior 6mo
3.22 → 3.37★
Sample avg · raw → solo-filtered