Enable maintenance mode on a site

Show visitors a branded 503 holding page while you do work on the site. Per-site, manual, paid plans only. Admins stay logged in.

Maintenance mode puts a single site behind a branded 503 holding page so public visitors don't see a half-deployed state, a broken plugin, or a partial migration. It's per-site, manual on/off, and available on Developer and Agency plans.

Turn it on

Open the site in your dashboard (Sites → [site]).
In the per-site sidebar, click Enable maintenance mode.
Optionally check Also block logged-in non-admin users if you want editors and contributors to see the splash too. Administrators always bypass.
Confirm.

Visitors immediately get HTTP 503 with a Retry-After header — search engines back off but don't deindex. Logged-in admins still see the live site so you can keep working.

Turn it off

Same place — the button now reads Disable maintenance mode in amber so you can't miss it. The site goes live the next request.

What still works during maintenance

WordPress admin (any logged-in admin)
WP-CLI, cron, AJAX, REST, XML-RPC — all server-to-server traffic bypasses the splash
The login screen — so admins can sign in to lift the holding page

This means Manage GPL itself can keep talking to the site while it's in maintenance — refresh, update, SSO login, all unaffected.

Customising the page

The page uses your WordPress site's title and a brand-coloured layout. There's no per-site custom HTML right now — the goal is "fast, lightweight, branded enough" rather than full template editing. If you've configured a Whitelabel profile, the connector still appears under your agency name in wp-admin while maintenance is on.

Scheduled updates and maintenance mode

Scheduled update runs do not auto-toggle maintenance — that's intentional (WP updates are atomic at the file level and a stuck-in-maintenance failure mode would be worse than the brief in-flight window). If you want a holding page during a scheduled run, enable maintenance manually before the scheduled hour and disable after.

Free plan?

Maintenance mode requires the Developer or Agency plan. Free plan accounts see the button greyed out with an upgrade nudge.