Martin Aranovitch

Share
WPMU DEV’s All-in-One WordPress Site Management Platform: A Comprehensive Review

Manage Unlimited WordPress Sites with WPMU DEV’s All-in-One Platform

Looking for a comprehensive tool to manage multiple WordPress sites for your clients? Then look no further…WPMU DEV’s all-in-one WordPress platform is your complete WordPress site management solution!

WPMU DEV logo

WPMU DEV provides an “all-in-one” WordPress platform for web developers and digital agencies offering website maintenance services.

As a WordPress web developer or digital agency, having an “all-in-one” WordPress site management platform that allows you to automate maintenance services and manage multiple client sites from one central location is one of the most important time-saving tools you can have.

This article provides a comprehensive, in-depth look at The Hub, a powerful WordPress site management tool from WPMU DEV.

Note: I worked for WPMU DEV for 5 years as its main blog content writer, creating many articles and tutorials about the platform, so I have an in-depth knowledge of the platform, its features, and the team responsible for developing and maintaining it.

I currently use this platform to host and manage 20+ sites (including this site), and I highly recommend that you try all of The Hub’s features by signing up for a risk-free membership.

Disclaimer: If you become a member through this site, you will purchase your membership at whatever price you usually pay, and I will get some months free of membership fees for referring you.

Now that we have all of the above out of the way, let’s get straight into it.

Whether you plan to manage one or many WordPress sites for your clients, The Hub is the ideal platform for managing everything from one central command center. As you will soon discover, a  WPMU DEV membership includes everything you need to manage unlimited WordPress sites effectively.

WPMU DEV

Sign up with WPMU DEV and access all of the features of this powerful WordPress site management tool.

In this article, we’ll look at the following areas:

Why Use A WordPress Site Management Tool?

Managing one or multiple WordPress sites for clients can be time-consuming and challenging, especially regarding updates, performance optimization, backups, security, and client management.

However, a WordPress site management tool can help you manage your sites more efficiently and effectively.

The WordPress site management tool you choose for your business should automate all necessary tasks, reducing the time and effort you spend managing sites. This will free up your time and resources to focus on growing your business.

Here are the key things to consider when choosing a WordPress site management tool:

Centralized Management

Choose a WordPress site management tool that lets you manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard. This will reduce the time and effort you spend managing each site individually.

Automated Updates

You’ll want to automate updating WordPress core, themes, and plugins, saving you time, reducing the risk of errors, and keeping your sites up-to-date with the latest security patches and bug fixes.

Regular Backups

Choose a site management tool that ensures your site data is backed up regularly, reducing the risk of data loss in case of hacking, hardware failure, or other unforeseen events, and provides automated backups and storage on cloud services like Dropbox, Google Drive, and Amazon S3.

Enhanced Security

Your WordPress management solution should monitor and improve the security of your WordPress sites by scanning for malware and vulnerabilities, enforcing strong passwords, and monitoring login attempts. It should also provide website security services, including malware removal and protection against DDoS attacks.

Performance Optimization

Your site management tool should help you optimize and improve the performance of your WordPress site by identifying and fixing slow-loading pages, reducing image sizes, caching content, and providing access to performance optimization features like minification and lazy loading of images to improve page speed.

Client Management

If you manage WordPress sites for clients, choose a site management tool that can help you streamline your client management processes by providing a client dashboard, client reporting, and invoicing, allowing you to manage multiple client sites collaboratively from one central location.

Now that you know what to look for, let’s examine one of the best WordPress site management tools: The Hub from WPMU DEV.

Who is WPMU DEV?

WPMU DEV provides an all-in-one WordPress platform with fast and affordable managed WordPress hosting, a full suite of premium WordPress plugins, website management tools, a thriving community forum, 24/7 expert support, and more.

WPMU DEV is also one of the leading companies in the WordPress industry. Its products and services are used by tens of thousands of WordPress users worldwide. WPMU DEV receives positive reviews and awards from trusted user review sites like G2 and TrustPilot in WordPress site management, managed hosting, and web hosting categories.

WPMU DEV is an award-winning WordPress company trusted by tens of thousands of WordPress users.

Now that you know a little about the company, let’s get into The Hub and see what makes it such a powerful WordPress site management tool.

What Is The Hub?

The Hub integrates everything needed to manage one or more WordPress sites into one integrated, easy-to-use platform. It is easy enough to use to benefit WordPress users at all levels.

Think of it as the command center where you can easily manage unlimited WordPress sites using various integrated management modules, all from one central location.

WPMU DEV's The Hub

The Hub lets you manage everything about your WordPress websites from one central location.

To understand just how powerful this tool is, we’ll start by briefly reviewing the different sections and modules of The Hub and what each area does.

WPMU DEV's The Hub Features list.

You can access everything from The Hub with just a few clicks.

1. Sites

This section lists all the WordPress sites you manage and lets you access the features you need to manage each site quickly and effectively.

WPMU DEV's The Hub screen

The Hub lets you easily manage unlimited WordPress sites from one central location.

2. Plugins

Here’s where you can install and manage WordPress plugins on all your sites without logging into each site’s administration area separately.

The Hub - Plugins screen

Manage all of your plugins from The Hub’s Plugins area.

3. Hosting

This module displays hosting information for all your WPMU DEV-hosted sites. It lets you view and manage areas like site configuration, analytics, backups, staging, WAF, security, email, storage, and other key hosting functions.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Hosting screen.

Manage all aspects of your WPMU DEV-hosted sites from the Hub’s Hosting screen.

4. Domains

This section lists all of your WPMU DEV-registered domains and lets you manage these domain(s), including DNS setup, domain transfers, etc.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Domains screen.

Manage your registered and connected domains from The Hub’s Domains section.

5. Team

The Team Module lets you add team members to The Hub, assign each member different roles, and set up permissions to manage your site(s) collaboratively.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Team screen.

Share access to your site management console with team members and assign them specific roles and restrictions, including access to WPMU DEV’s support team

6. Clients & Billing

The Hub has a built-in clients and billing module that lets you sell your products and services, set up one-time and recurring subscriptions, invoice clients, and more.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Clients & Billing screen.

Manage client invoices and billing with The Hub’s built-in Clients & Billing tool.

7. White Label

You can become a white-label reseller and build a profitable business with recurring revenue by rebranding and reselling all of WPMU DEV’s products and services as your own.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - White Label Reseller screen.

You can even run a business or earn recurring income as a WPMU DEV white-label reseller.

Note: The option to white-label everything is ideal for web developers and digital marketing agencies, especially when combined with an Agency membership, as it lets you rebrand and resell everything under your brand.

8. Support

The Support module lets you access 24/7 expert support if you experience issues with your sites or have any questions related to WordPress, web hosting, eCommerce, etc.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Support screen.

Access to documentation, tutorials, and 24×7 support is just one click away.

9. Community

WPMU DEV gives members access to a thriving forum and a community that posts and answers questions, provides solutions, and helps you solve all kinds of WordPress and online business-related issues.

The Hub’s Community module lets you follow the latest forum discussions and any threads you are subscribed to.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Community screen.

Keep in touch with member discussions and forum threads in The Hub’s Community section.

10. Blog

Clicking here takes you to the WPMU DEV blog, where you can browse thousands of in-depth articles and expert tutorials on WordPress, hosting, and web development.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Blog screen.

WPMU DEV’s blog provides in-depth articles and tutorials for WordPress users.

11. Roadmap

This section links to the roadmap, where you can see what new and upcoming features are being developed for WPMU DEV’s tools, plugins, services, etc.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Roadmap.

See what’s coming next from WPMU DEV in the Roadmap.

12. Account Features

This module lets you access additional areas of your site management tool, like:

  • What’s New – The latest news, product updates, articles, and tutorials.
  • Notification – Be notified when new comments are posted on forum discussions that you follow, see newly published blog articles and tutorials, etc.
  • Preferences – Set your Hub’s language preferences and configure which services you want to display or hide on your dashboard.
  • Profile Settings – Access your account settings, profile, membership details, etc.
WPMU DEV: The Hub - What's new and Notifications screen.

Keep up with the latest company news, announcements, updates, and more from your site management dashboard.

13. Search Sites

If you manage multiple sites on The Hub, you can use the Search feature to quickly locate and access a specific site from your list.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - search feature.

Find sites quickly in The Hub using the search feature.

14. Add A Site

This module lets you easily create a new site, connect to an external-hosted site, clone an existing site, or migrate a WordPress site from another host.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Add a Site

The Hub gives you various options to add new sites to your site management console.

15. All

Clicking on this tab lists all the sites you currently manage.

This feature is useful if you have filtered your list of sites to display only specific sites and want to reset the screen to display the full list.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - All screen.

Click the “All” tab to view a list of all the sites you manage from The Hub.

16. Hosted

This view is similar to the “All” view but only displays sites you currently host with WPMU DEV.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Hosted screen

View all the sites you have hosted with WPMU DEV.

Note: You can manage externally hosted sites from The Hub using the WPMU DEV Dashboard plugin (discussed below).

17. Updates

Here, you manage all your plugin, theme, and core updates for all of your sites, enable update automation, disable updates, and more.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates screen

Manage plugin, theme, and core updates for all your sites in the Updates section.

18. Configs

Configs allow you to quickly set up plugins using preset configurations with many settings and options. This is a useful and time-saving feature if you set up multiple WordPress sites and install WPMU DEV plugins like Hummingbird, Defender, SmartCrawl, etc.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Configs screen

Save time configuring WPMU DEV’s premium plugin settings and services with Configs.

19. Site Templates

Site Templates are another useful and time-saving feature for setting up multiple WordPress sites.

Templates let you set up new WordPress sites quickly and easily using pre-configured WordPress themes.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Site Templates screen

Set up new websites quickly using Site Templates.

20. IP Banning

The IP Banning section lets you protect your sites by creating and managing global lists to allow and block IP addresses and automatically sync these lists with any or all of your sites.

Blocked IP addresses cannot access your sites, and allowed IP addresses are exempt from any ban rules outlined in your site’s security settings (e.g., if using the Defender plugin).

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - IP Banning screen

Protect your sites from malicious users and cyber attacks using IP banning.

21. Sort by

Organize your sites using different sorting options (i.e. sort sites alphabetically by ascending or descending order) and pin your favorite (starred sites) or most often-used sites to the top of the list for quick access.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Sort screen

Use the Sort feature to customize how your list of managed sites displays in The Hub.

22. Filters & Labels

This is another organizational feature of The Hub that lets you filter your sites by status (active or suspended sites) and categories and use custom color labels to group your sites for easier and faster management.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Filter & Labels screen

Organize your list of managed sites in The Hub using filters and labels.

23. Views

View your sites in The Hub using a grid or list format.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Display screen

View your sites in a List or Grid format.

New Features

WPMU DEV is continually improving The Hub and adding new features to the platform.

For example, since this article was written, here are some newly-released features:

Tickets

The “Tickets” feature is available exclusively to WPMU DEV Agency members. It allows you to submit support tickets through a branded client portal, which can be managed using the Hub Client plugin. This setup ensures brand consistency by keeping the WPMU DEV brand hidden from your clients.

Your clients can create and manage support tickets, view ticket details, and filter tickets based on response status or ticket status. They can also manage individual tickets by viewing, closing, reopening, or deleting them, and they can receive email notifications for new replies.

Expert Services

If you want to outsource some of the technical work involved in managing your clients’ sites, WPMU DEV provides the following white-label services:

  • On-Demand Development: Need help with CSS or building custom functionality? WPMU DEV’s experts will create tailored scripts to solve your WordPress issues and extend your site’s functionalities.
  • Proactive Monitoring: This service involves continuous monitoring of your client’s WordPress site to ensure it remains online and functional. The WPMU DEV team will watch your client’s site 24/7 and immediately address any issues, such as downtime due to attacks or hacks. This ensures swift resolution of issues before they impact your client’s business, allowing you to focus on other important tasks.
  • Site Speed Optimization: This service enhances your website’s performance by achieving high Google PageSpeed scores (90+ on desktop and 75+ on mobile). The expert team will optimize your client’s site for speed. Outsourcing site speed optimization ensures your client’s site runs efficiently without you having to manage the technical details yourself, leading to improved user experience and potentially better search engine rankings.
  • Malware Removal: This service provides expert assistance in cleaning your client’s website from malware and configuring optimal security settings to prevent future attacks. Outsourcing malware removal ensures that your client’s site is thoroughly cleaned and secured by experts. The service includes a 7-day guarantee, meaning any issues that arise within this period will be fixed at no additional cost. This service also offers detailed reporting and security hardening measures.

By outsourcing these services to WPMU DEV, you can save time, reduce stress, and focus on growing your business while ensuring your clients’ sites are optimized, secure, and running smoothly.

How To Save Time Managing Multiple WordPress Sites With The Hub

WPMU DEV user review - G2.com

WPMU DEV user review. Source: g2.com

If you manage multiple WordPress sites, it’s important to work quickly and effectively when performing tasks like updates, maintenance, backups, optimizing sites for better performance or SEO, hardening your sites’ security, etc.

In addition to the time-saving features we’ve already looked at (configs, templates, site cloning, etc.), The Hub provides access to comprehensive “dashboards” where you can drill down to monitor and perform essential management functions for each of your sites.

Also, note the use of color-coded icons in this section, which lets you quickly tell if your site has any issues (e.g., red = issues, green = everything is okay, grey = feature not installed or activated on the site).

Let’s go through each of these sections.

WPMU DEV: The Hub -Site menus

Manage essential areas of your sites effectively in The Hub using menu shortcut buttons.

1. Website

Clicking on the site name creates an “Overview” dashboard to monitor and review your site’s managed areas.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Site Overview

Clicking on a site gives you an overview of its performance in all vital management areas.

You can also navigate quickly to different site management screens using The Hub’s navigation sidebar.

The Hub's Navigation Sidebar

Use The Hub’s navigation sidebar to quickly access various site management screens.

Note: you can also configure your dashboard in the Account > Preferences section of The Hub (see item #12 in the previous section).

The Hub - Show & Hide Services

Choose which services you want to display or hide in The Hub.

2. Updates

Outdated versions of the WordPress core software, plugins, and/or themes can pose a serious security threat to WordPress sites.

The Updates feature shows you exactly what needs updating on each of your managed site(s), including plugins, themes, and core software updates.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

The Hub’s Updates features display how many outdated components need updating on your site(s).

You can either update everything at once (Update all) or perform individual updates in just a few clicks without logging into each site separately to perform updates.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Updates menu

Update everything at once or perform individual updates directly in The Hub with a few clicks.

This can be a real time-saver if you manage multiple WordPress sites. Many plugins and themes need updating when WordPress releases a new version to avoid compatibility issues.

The Hub - Update notifications.

This feature can help you save time updating multiple WordPress sites, especially when WordPress releases a new version of its software.

3. Hosting

If your site is hosted with WPMU DEV, you can hover over the Hosting menu icon to view its hosting plan.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Hosting menu

Hover over the Hosting menu to view hosting plan information for your site.

Clicking on the hosting menu icon brings up the Hosting Overview dashboard, which provides more details and access to various hosting functions.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Hosting Overview screen.

Your site’s hosting overview screen.

4. Security

The Hub’s Security module uses the configuration of the Defender Pro plugin installed on your site to provide an overview of your security status, and access settings, configurations, and quick links for managing your site’s security.

It includes various security features, such as scans, reports, recommendations, malware detection, blocklist monitoring, firewall, audit logging, and advanced tools.

If the security icon is red, hovering over it gives you a quick glance at how many security issues need addressing.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites -Security menu

Hover over the Security icon to view the number of security issues on your site.

Clicking the icon on the menu brings up the Security dashboard where you can view and access more details and manage security settings for your site.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Security dashboard.

Manage every aspect of your site’s security from the Security dashboard.

For instance, you can run a security scan for the site directly from The Hub.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Security Scanning

Run security scans from The Hub.

The Hub will notify you when the scan is complete, so you can return to your business.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Security scanning notifications feature.

Run hands-free security scans of your site. The Hub notifies you when the security scan is complete.

To learn more about keeping your sites secure with WPMU DEV, click here: WPMU DEV’s Security services

5. Performance

The Hub’s Performance module uses the configuration settings of the Hummingbird Pro plugin installed on your site to help you monitor, optimize, and improve the speed of your WordPress site(s) with scans, recommendations, caching, Gzip compression, asset optimization, and other performance features.

Hover over the Performance icon on the menu to view your site’s page speed score.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Performance menu

Hover over the Performance menu to view your site’s speed score.

Click on the icon to bring up the Performance dashboard. Here you can monitor all aspects of your site’s performance and improve your site and page optimization.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Performance dashboard.

Get an overview of your site’s SEO performance in The Hub’s Performance dashboard.

6. SEO

The Hub’s SEO module uses the configuration settings of the SmartCrawl Pro plugin installed on your site to improve your page rank and search results with testing, recommendations, improved tagging, social sharing, and other search engine optimization tools.

Hover over the SEO icon on the menu to view your site’s SEO score.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - SEO menu

Hover over the SEO menu to view your site’s SEO score.

Click on the icon to bring up the SEO dashboard, where you can view your site’s available SEO settings and configurations and access quick links to corresponding features in your site for managing your site’s SEO.

This includes SEO score, site crawler, content analysis, MozRank, automatic linking, Titles & Meta, schema, social settings, and SEO reports.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - SEO dashboard.

Optimize your site’s SEO from The Hub’s SEO dashboard.

7. Backups

WPMU DEV’s hosting service uses advanced server-based technology to provide users with fast, space-efficient, and nearly instantaneous backups and doesn’t charge extra for backup storage.

In addition to reliable, redundant, and automated daily hosting backups, you can create manual or cloud backups anytime.

Hovering over the Backups icon shows you when your last backup was performed, your backup schedule, and the ability to create a new backup.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Backups menu

Hover over the Backups icon to view your last backup and create a new backup.

Click on the icon to bring up the Backups section, where you can view a list of all your available backups, create a new backup, restore your site from a previous backup, and view other backup-related information.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Backups dashboard.

View your most recent backups, create a new backup, or restore a previous backup from the Backups dashboard.

8. Uptime

The Uptime module lets you monitor your website’s uptime, downtime, and response times.

Hover over the Uptime icon to view your current status (you can also tell by the icon’s color whether your website is currently up or down.)

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Uptime menu

Hover over the Uptime icon to view your current status.

Click on the Uptime icon in the menu to access your Uptime dashboard and view your site’s uptime log and settings.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Uptime dashboard.

View your uptime logs in the Uptime dashboard.

9. Broken Links Checker

Broken Link Checker (BLC) lets you run a full scan of your site to find any broken links and view a detailed scan report to fix these.

If the Broken Links Checker icon is red, hover over it to view the number of broken links on your site, when the last scan was performed, and when the next scan is scheduled to run (or set up a regular schedule).

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Broken Link Checker menu

Hover over the Broken Link Checker icon to view how many broken links are on your site.

Click on the icon to bring up the Broken Link Checker dashboard, where you can set up and run automated broken link scans, view the links, ignore links, or report links as not broken.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Broken Link Checker dashboard.

View and fix broken links on your site.

10. Statistics

The Hub’s Analytics module lets you track your site visitors and get detailed information on how they interact with and engage with your site using WPMU DEV’s built-in analytics.

Hover over the Analytics icon to view visit and pageview stats for a specified time period.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Analytics menu

Hover over the Analytics icon to view your current status.

Click on the icon to access the Analytics dashboard and check your site’s statistics.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Analytics dashboard.

Get an overview of your site’s analytics performance from the Analytics dashboard.

11. Reports

Use the Hub’s Reports feature to create comprehensive, white-label activity and performance reports for your site, automate report schedules, and have the Hub deliver these reports directly to your email.

These reports pull information from your site’s active plugins and services and cover Updates, Security, Backups, Performance, SEO, Analytics, and Uptime.

At a glance, green report icons let you see which sites have reports scheduled.

Hover over the Reports icon to view information about your next scheduled report.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Reports menu

Hover over a green Reports icon to see when the next report will be sent.

Click on the Reports icon to view all the reports set up for the site.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Reports dashboard.

Set up regular reports for your site in the Reports dashboard.

12. Clients & Billing

Clients & Billing allows you to create & sell product and service packages to clients and manage all aspects of your billing process from The Hub or the Hub Client plugin installed on your site.

Hovering over the Clients & Billing icon displays information such as monthly recurring revenue (MRR), the number of active subscriptions, the net billing amount, and outstanding invoices.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Client & Billings menu

Hover over the Clients & Billing icon to view current Client Billing information.

Click on the icon to access the Client & Billing dashboard and modify your settings.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - Client Billing dashboard

Manage your client billing details in the Client Billing dashboard.

13. Site Admin

The Hub uses secure authentication methods to connect with your site(s). If you need to work inside the site, click on this icon to automatically and securely log into it and access its admin area.

WPMU DEV: The Hub - My Sites - Site Admin menu

Click on the WordPress icon to log securely into the site.

14. Labels

The Labels section lets you organize groups of sites using customizable colored labels.

The Hub - Labels

Organize different groups of sites using colored labels and speed up your site management.

15. Options

Click on the Options menu icon (with the three vertical ellipses) to access a range of useful options and functionality.

The Hub - Options menu.

Click on the Options menu to view additional options and settings for managing the site.

Let’s look at a few more areas you can integrate into your WordPress site management strategy.

Why Choose WPMU DEV For Web Hosting

While all the features discussed so far make The Hub the most effective WordPress site management tool available, other aspects of WPMU DEV’s offering help to integrate this so you can manage everything from one central location.

In addition to managing the sites themselves, this includes being able to manage web hosting, domains, and email for all those sites.

Hosting

WPMU DEV is a recognized leader in managed WordPress hosting for providing ultra-fast and reliable hosting managed by WordPress experts.

You can see how it compares with other hosting services and how users rate WPMU DEV’s hosting service.

With WPMU DEV, you can choose a hosting plan to suit your needs and budget. The hosting will then automatically be set up and integrated with The Hub.

All Lite, Essential, and Premium hosting plans include enterprise-level features fully configured upon installation.

WPMU DEV Hosting plans

WPMU DEV offers blazing fast and affordable dedicated managed WordPress hosting plans to suit all types of WordPress sites and hosting budgets.

Users with an agency membership can also white label, purchase, and resell Quantum, a hosting plan for small business websites. This plan allows sites to be hosted on a dedicated server space for around the same amount as hosting on a shared server.

Quantum from WPMU DEV.

Quantum gives you dedicated WordPress hosting, not shared hosting.

Domains

If you are a WPMU DEV member, you can also register domain names at wholesale prices, which will be automatically set up and available for sites in The Hub.

WPMU DEV Domains.

WPMU DEV members can become domain resellers and purchase domains at unbeatable prices.

Email

Emails are an important feature of running websites and online businesses.

WPMU DEV offers free, domain-specific email hosting for unlimited sites with forwarders and email aliases, fully integrated with The Hub.

WPMU DEV Email hosting

Integrate email hosting with The Hub.

Check out the WPMU DEV documentation section to learn more about using The Hub to manage your WordPress sites.

Let’s look at another vital aspect of managing WordPress sites effectively…using the right plugins!

WPMU DEV’s Premium Plugins – Essential Plugins For All WordPress Sites

The fewer plugins you need to manage your sites effectively, the better. Fewer plugins mean using fewer server resources, reducing or eliminating potential conflicts, errors, and crashes, and faster and easier overall site management.

WPMU DEV has built a robust suite of essential plugins that integrate seamlessly with your site management processes.

With WPMU DEV, you can choose the option of membership with hosting, or choose to host only.

A paid WPMU DEV membership includes access to the full suite of WordPress premium plugins covering everything you need, including site management, image optimization, site performance, SEO, security, backups, white label dashboard, white label video, white label WordPress, custom analytics, forms builder, marketing tools, and site migration tools.

Paid WPMU DEV hosting plans include 7 pro plugins that fully integrate with The Hub, allowing you to install, update, monitor, and manage everything from your central WordPress management tool.

While WPMU DEV offers a free version of most of the plugins described below (you can access the free plugins from the WordPress.org plugin directory or download them here), these have limited functionality compared to the premium versions.

Here’s a brief rundown of each WPMU DEV plugin:

WPMU DEV Dashboard – Site Management

WPMU DEV Dashboard

WPMU DEV Dashboard – Site management plugin.

WPMU DEV Dashboard is the communication plugin that allows you to integrate all of WPMU DEV’s powerful services with your WordPress site for effective site management, even if you are hosting your website(s) elsewhere.

The WPMU DEV Dashboard allows you to install, update, and manage the other plugins discussed below. You can also access WPMU DEV’s support from your own WordPress admin so they can diagnose and fix your issues.

More info: WPMU DEV Dashboard

Smush – Image Optimization

Smush - WordPress image optimization plugin.

Smush – WordPress image optimization plugin.

Smush is an easy-to-use plugin with an intuitive dashboard and advanced settings that speeds up your website’s loading time, improves its performance, and prevents your website from becoming slow and sluggish.

It does this by optimizing your website’s images, making them smaller without sacrificing quality. This results in faster loading times and improved website performance.

With Smush Pro, you can optimize unlimited images in bulk at once with just a few clicks and use features like lazy loading and automatic compression to further improve your website’s speed. Plus, with Super Smush multi-pass lossy compression, you can save up to 2x the space without sacrificing image quality.

Smush Pro offers a CDN for faster optimization results and can preserve image EXIF data.

By using Smush Pro, you can experience faster load times, reduced server space usage, and better web accessibility for all your site’s users.

More info: Smush Pro

Hummingbird – Site Optimization

Hummingbird - WordPress Optimization Plugin

Hummingbird – WordPress site optimization plugin.

Hummingbird is a powerful performance and optimization plugin for WordPress that will help improve your website’s speed and performance.

Hummingbird Pro offers advanced features such as minification, GZIP compression, browser caching, and image optimization, which can help significantly improve website speed and performance. It also includes a performance report that examines the same vital components of your website as Google PageSpeed Insights and gives you an overall score out of 100. It also gives scores for aspects of your site that you may want to consider fixing, including render-blocking resources, server response time, image optimization, and minification.

Other benefits of using Hummingbird Pro include uptime monitoring, which monitors your site around the clock and notifies you if anything goes wrong, including slow response times, server errors, and pages disappearing.

More info: Hummingbird Pro

Defender – WordPress Security

Defender - WordPress Security Plugin

Defender – WordPress security plugin.

Defender is a plugin that provides complete security for WordPress sites.

Defender offers a range of features such as scheduled security scans, vulnerability reports, safety recommendations, blacklist monitoring, and customized hardening for your site.

Defender Pro also includes secure cloud-based audit logs to see every change made to your site, plugin and theme code file change detection, and automated scans and reports with a checklist of all issues that need fixing.

Defender Pro deters hackers with IP banning, login lockout, updating security keys, two-factor authorization, and more. It also prevents brute force attacks, SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and hackers from exploiting WordPress vulnerabilities.

Defender Pro also offers a range of benefits such as easy installation, one-click security tweaks, disabling trackbacks and pingbacks, hiding error reporting, preventing information disclosure, preventing PHP execution, changing the location of WordPress’s default login area with login masking, enabling round-the-clock firewall protection, setting up login lockout, automating blocking of bot IPS with 404 detention, blocking users based on location with geolocation IP lockout, blocking or allowing IPs with IP Banning, and enabling two-factor authentication.

More info: Defender Pro

SmartCrawl – WordPress SEO

SmartCrawl - WordPress SEO plugin

SmartCrawl – WordPress SEO plugin.

SmartCrawl is a powerful plugin that helps optimize your website’s on-page SEO for search engines, improve your online presence, increase website traffic, and create better user engagement.

SmartCrawl offers a range of features that help optimize your website for search engines, including automated SEO scanning, real-time keyword and content analysis, detailed audits and reports, and one-click recommendations.

With SmartCrawl Pro, you can create targeted content that ranks top of your favorite search engine. It also allows you to fine-tune your title and description on each post and page, create comprehensive sitemaps, verify your site with Google and Bing, connect to a free Moz account for SEO reporting, and enable automatic internal link building.

SmartCrawl Pro is easy to use. Its setup wizard walks you through the most important settings. It also offers multiple keyword analyses, additional SEO recommendations, the ability to disable SEO and readability analysis in the post list, and more.

More info: SmartCrawl Pro

Forminator – Form Builder

Forminator - Form builder plugin

Forminator is a versatile form builder plugin for WordPress.

Forminator is an easy-to-use and feature-rich form builder plugin that lets you create various forms, from simple contact forms to complex order forms with payment collection, polls, quizzes, and more.

Forminator Pro includes extra features such as forms that let you collect eSignatures.

More info: Forminator Pro

Branda – White Label WordPress

Branda is a white-labeling and admin-customizing plugin for WordPress that allows you to customize every aspect of your website, from the front end to the back end.

Branda Pro offers a wide range of features, including the ability to reorganize the admin menu and bar, create custom login, maintenance mode, and coming soon pages, personalize widgets, add new help content, create a custom color scheme, add custom CSS, choose a new email template, edit the author box, create a personalized cookie notice, personalize the database error page, add header and footer content, control comments, select a new favicon, and set text replacement rules.

With Branda Pro, you can completely white-label WordPress with over 30 modules for customizing the dashboard. This is useful for WordPress developers and design agencies, or if you plan to provide WordPress sites to other users fully branded as your own.

More info: Branda Pro

Shipper – WordPress Site Migrations

Shipper is a WordPress plugin that helps you migrate WordPress sites from one host to another, simplifying the migration process, and saving you time and money.

The plugin offers two forms of migration: API Migration and Package Migration. API Migration transfers everything directly to the new site using a secure API. At the same time, Package Migration creates a package of the site’s files and databases that can be manually uploaded to the new host.

Shipper also offers pre-flight checks, helpful hints to speed up the migration process, accurate ETAs, and calculated website sizes. Additionally, Shipper Pro handles moving local to production and development to live and offers password confirmation to protect connected sites from hackers.

More info: Shipper

Hustle – Lead Generation

Hustle - Lead Generation plugin

Hustle is a lead generation plugin that lets you create effective pop-ups, slide-ins, and embeds for your site.

Hustle is a plugin that provides unlimited pop-ups, slide-ins, email opt-ins, and social sharing modules for marketing campaigns.

With Hustle Pro, you can create and customize modules to grow your email list and increase subscribers, leads, and customers by displaying targeted ads with unblockable popups, slide-ins, opt-ins, and embeds.

Hustle Pro seamlessly integrates with over 1000 third-party applications and provides conversion reports with configurable metrics.

More info: Hustle Pro

Beehive – WordPress Analytics

Beehive - WordPress Analytics plugin

Beehive – add customizable Google Analytics dashboards and reports to WordPress.

Beehive is an all-in-one Google Analytics Dashboard plugin that lets you easily track your important website statistics straight from your WordPress dashboard.

Beehive Pro features beautiful charts and graphs, Google Tag Manager, Custom Stats Dashboard, User Roles & Permissions, and more. It also allows you to enable display ads and view their current analytics in real-time. It includes personalized authentication screen icons and project names, eCommerce compatibility, and constant updates with enhancements.

More info: Beehive Pro

Snapshot – WordPress Backups

Snapshot - WordPress Backups plugin

Use Snapshot for safe, convenient, and space-efficient WordPress backups.

Snapshot is a backup plugin for WordPress that allows you to create and manage backups of your website’s data and store these on-site and off-site with FTP and SFTP, Amazon S3, Dropbox, Google Drive, and WPMU DEV cloud.

Snapshot Pro lets you easily restore a website from the admin dashboard, even when it is down or locked.

With Snapshot Pro, you can create unlimited snapshots, schedule backups, customize what’s backed up, store unlimited snapshots, auto-remove old backups, set backup intervals, and download log files.

The plugin is also flexible when it comes to backing up WordPress. It allows you to back up a single install of WordPress or a Multisite network’s main site and sub-sites separately.

You can also manage snapshots directly in the WordPress dashboard or use the plugin in conjunction with WPMU DEV-managed backups to save backups to multiple locations, creating redundant backups and ensuring no loss of content in the event of a hack or error.

More info: Snapshot Pro

Integrated Video Tutorials – WordPress Training Videos

Integrated Video Tutorials (IVT) is a plugin that allows you to embed high-quality educational tutorial videos on a WordPress site’s front end and admin.

The plugin includes 45+ regularly updated WordPress training videos, white-label branding, user displays, and more. Custom training videos and playlists can also be added.

IVT and these comprehensive WordPress user tutorials can help you improve your WordPress skills, onboard new users, and reduce support requests.

More info: Integrated Video Tutorials (IVT)

The Hub Client – While Label WPMU DEV

The Hub Client is a plugin that allows you to install a white-label duplicate version of The Hub on your WordPress site.

This is a useful plugin for WordPress developers and design agencies or if you plan to start your own agency reselling WPMU DEV’s products and services. It allows you to offer your clients and team members better site management by overseeing plugins, accessing hosting information, scheduling backups, and more from your branded site instead of going through WPMU DEV.

More info: Hub Client

Check out WPMU DEV’s Pro Plugins section to learn more about the plugins above.

Accessing WPMU DEV’s 24/7 Support

Many WPMU DEV users rave about how excellent their 24/7 WordPress support is.

In fact, WPMU DEV consistently receives 5-star reviews from users for its services and the level of support it provides to members.

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

Not only do you get access to 24/7 expert support for any question or problem related to WordPress, hosting, eCommerce, etc., but you can also request expert hosting migration of your sites for free, submit feature requests, get help from other members in the forum, and access extensive documentation and immediate help from their AI assistant.

Should your site ever get hacked, WPMU DEV’s support team will attempt to restore and clean up your site as part of their commitment to providing members with ultimate WordPress site security.

Accessing WPMU DEV support from The Hub is as simple as clicking on the Help button and choosing an option for getting assistance.

WPMU DEV's The Hub - Help Center

Access 24/7 expert support with just one click of the Help button.

Manage Your WordPress Sites Effectively With WPMU DEV

Whether you manage one or thousands of WordPress sites, managing WordPress sites effectively requires having access to excellent site management tools, excellent hosting, excellent plugins, and excellent support from a team of real WordPress experts.

If you add up the cost of sourcing all of the above components separately, you will see that there is no better deal than becoming a WPMU DEV member.

You get everything you need to manage WordPress sites effectively, including the ability to resell and brand the services as your own and earn additional recurring revenue.

The video below summarizes everything WPMU DEV makes available:

learn more

As mentioned earlier, I spent 5 years working with WPMU DEV, I know the team behind it, and I currently host and manage all my WordPress sites from this platform, so I cannot recommend this platform highly enough.

Accessing world-class expert WordPress support at any time of the day or night, in addition to everything you receive, is a compelling reason enough to become a WPMU DEV member.

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

WPMU DEV User Review - G2.com

Source: g2.com

I hope this article has given you enough information to consider using The Hub as your WordPress site management tool.

For more details about The Hub and WPMU DEV’s “all-in-one” WordPress platform, visit their website: WPMU DEV