What each platform costs as your fleet grows

ManageWP charges per site, per add-on. MainWP charges once and lets you run the dashboard yourself. WP Umbrella charges a flat per-site rate. Those three sentences describe three completely different cost curves, and the curve matters more than the headline price once you pass a handful of sites. This page shows the arithmetic openly so you can check it against your own numbers.

Estimates use published list prices Formulas shown in full No sponsored placements

Estimated monthly cost by fleet size

Choose how many WordPress sites you maintain. The chart and table below recalculate using the assumptions printed underneath, which you can read and disagree with. These are illustrative estimates built from publicly listed rates, not quotes, and not a substitute for the vendor's own pricing page.

Sites you manage

Estimated monthly outlay at 25 sites
Platform	Pricing shape	Estimated monthly	Per site

Assumptions behind every figure above
ManageWP  = min(6.00 × sites, 150.00 × ceil(sites / 100))
   based on a typical care-plan add-on set (premium backup 2.00, uptime 1.00, security 1.00, performance 1.00, client reports 1.00), capped by the stacked bundle route for larger fleets
MainWP    = 199.00 / 12, flat, unlimited sites, dashboard hosting billed separately by your host
WP Umbrella = 2.00 × sites, using the listed 1.99 EUR per site converted at roughly parity; the security add-on is not included
InfiniteWP = annual tier for your site count divided by 12 (147 up to 10 sites, 247 up to 20, 347 up to 50, 447 above that); separate monitoring add-ons not included
WP Remote  = 1.99 × sites, using the entry paid tier rather than the higher tiers

Not modelled here: WPMU DEV, Modular DS and the Automattic for Agencies dashboard price on structures that do not map onto a per-site line without distorting them. They are covered in the table further down instead.

Three shapes, not one market

The pricing structures behind the curves

Comparing headline numbers across these platforms is close to meaningless, because they are not selling the same unit. One sells features per site, one sells software you host, one sells a seat for every site regardless of what you use. Knowing which shape you are buying tells you more about your five year bill than any single price.

Per site, per feature

You pay only for the add-ons you switch on, site by site. A brochure site on a light plan costs almost nothing; a store on a full plan costs several times more. Cost tracks your service tiers closely.

Used by: ManageWP, and in a looser sense the Jetpack product range.

Flat licence, self hosted

You install the dashboard on your own WordPress site and pay a single fee no matter how many sites connect to it. The bill stops growing; the operational work does not, because patching and securing that dashboard is now your job.

Used by: MainWP, and InfiniteWP with site count tiers layered on top.

All in, per site

One rate per connected site, every feature included, nothing to configure at the billing level. Simple to quote to a client and simple to forecast, but you pay the full rate for the quiet sites too.

Used by: WP Umbrella, and the entry tiers of WP Remote.

Reference table

ManageWP and the alternatives at a glance

Figures below were the publicly listed rates when this page was reviewed. Vendors change plans, run promotions and adjust limits, so treat every number as a starting point and confirm it on the vendor's own pricing page before you commit a client roster to anything.

Entry pricing and delivery model. Currency shown as published by each vendor.
Platform	Where it runs	Free tier	Published entry pricing	Cost behaviour at scale
ManageWP	Vendor cloud (owned by GoDaddy)	Yes, unlimited sites for updates, one click login and a monthly backup	Add-ons from about 1 to 2 USD per site per month each, billed in arrears	Rises linearly with sites and add-ons, then flattens if you move to stacked bundles covering up to 100 sites each
MainWP	Your own server, open source plugin	Yes, the core dashboard is free for unlimited sites	Pro extensions bundle listed around 199 USD per year, with monthly and lifetime options	Effectively flat. Your variable cost becomes hosting and your own maintenance time
WP Umbrella	Vendor cloud, EU hosted	Trial only	1.99 EUR per site per month with core features included, optional security add-on priced separately	Straight line. Easy to forecast, no discount curve at volume
InfiniteWP	Your own server, self hosted panel	Yes, a free base panel for core management	Annual tiers by site count, listed from about 147 USD per year	Steps up at each site count threshold, then flattens on the unlimited tier
WP Remote	Vendor cloud, built on BlogVault infrastructure	Yes, a limited free tier	Paid tiers listed from about 1.99 USD per site per month, rising for staging and security features	Linear within a tier, with a step whenever you need capabilities from a higher tier
WPMU DEV	Vendor cloud, with optional hosting from the same vendor	Trial only	Subscription tiers that bundle the dashboard with a plugin suite; see the vendor for current tiers	Steps by plan. Value depends on how much of the bundled plugin suite you actually deploy
Modular DS	Vendor cloud	Trial only	Fixed subscription tiers by site count; see the vendor for current tiers	Steps by tier, so cost is predictable but you pay for headroom between thresholds
Automattic for Agencies	Vendor cloud, tied to Jetpack and WordPress.com accounts	Joining the programme is free, and the sites overview itself carries no fee	Individual Jetpack products are bought per site, with agency pricing on eligible products	Depends entirely on which products you attach. The dashboard is not the cost, the products are

What a price chart cannot show

Four costs that never appear on a pricing page

Running the dashboard yourself

A self hosted panel needs hosting, updates, backups of its own and hardening. It also holds credentials for every connected site, which raises the stakes on that maintenance considerably. If nobody on your team owns that job, the saving is borrowed rather than earned.

Migration between platforms

Moving a roster means reconnecting every site, rebuilding report templates, redoing white label settings and re establishing backup history. Some vendors offer assisted migration. Budget the hours regardless, because the first month on a new platform is rarely the cheap one.

Backup storage and retention

Headline backup pricing usually assumes modest storage and a standard retention window. Media heavy sites, stores with large databases and longer retention requirements can change the arithmetic. Check storage limits and overage terms next to the per site figure.

Time spent per update round

The largest line item in most maintenance operations is labour, not licences. A platform that saves ten minutes per site per month across fifty sites is worth more than the entire subscription difference between the options on this page. That saving is real but it is specific to your workflow, which is why no page can calculate it for you.

Common questions

Questions people ask when comparing these platforms

Is the ManageWP free tier genuinely free, or a trial?

It is a standing free tier rather than a time limited trial. The free level covers connecting unlimited sites, bulk updates, one click login, plugin and theme management, basic checks and a monthly cloud backup. Anything beyond that, including more frequent backups, uptime monitoring and advanced client reports, sits behind paid add-ons priced per site. Confirm the current feature split on the vendor's pricing page, since the boundary between free and paid can move.

At what fleet size does self hosting usually start to pay off?

Purely on licence cost, a flat annual fee overtakes per site pricing quite early, often somewhere in the region of ten to fifteen sites depending on which add-ons you enable. On total cost the answer is different, because self hosting adds server cost and your own maintenance time. Agencies with in house technical capacity tend to find the trade worthwhile; teams without it often find the licence saving disappears into support hours.

Do these platforms replace a backup plugin or a security plugin?

Partly, and the overlap is worth auditing before you buy. Most of these platforms include some form of backup and some form of scanning, either natively or through a paid add-on. If you already pay separately for a backup service or a security plugin across the same roster, you may be buying the same capability twice. Equally, a management dashboard's scanning is not always equivalent to a dedicated security product, so compare the actual feature descriptions rather than the category label.

Can you keep a client roster on more than one platform?

Yes, and some teams do it deliberately, for example keeping high value stores on a platform with stronger recovery tooling while lighter brochure sites sit on a cheaper tier elsewhere. The cost of that approach is operational rather than financial: two dashboards, two sets of reports and two places to check when something breaks.

Why does this page not name a single winner?

Because the deciding variables are yours, not ours. Fleet size, technical capacity, whether your clients pay for backups, whether you need EU data residency, and how much your time is worth all change the answer. A page that declared one platform best for everyone would be telling you something it cannot know.

How this comparison was put together

Sources. Feature descriptions and prices were taken from each vendor's public website and public documentation, supplemented by published third party comparisons where a vendor does not list a figure openly. Where sources disagreed, the vendor's own page was preferred and the figure was described as approximate.

Currency and conversion. Vendors publish in different currencies. Where a conversion was needed for the chart it was done at roughly parity for readability, which is an approximation and not a live exchange rate.

Independence. This page is published independently. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or otherwise connected to ManageWP, GoDaddy, MainWP, WP Umbrella, InfiniteWP, WP Remote, WPMU DEV, Modular DS, Automattic or any other company named here. All product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners and are used for identification and comparison only.

Limits of the estimate. Every figure on this page is an illustrative estimate produced by the formulas shown, using list prices at the time of review. It is not a quotation, not an offer and not a prediction of what you will be charged. Promotional rates, regional pricing, taxes, annual discounts and plan changes can all move the real number. Verify current pricing with the vendor before purchasing.

Corrections. If a figure here is out of date or wrong, we would rather fix it than defend it. Use the contact link in the footer.