InstaManage Explained: Basic vs Advanced WordPress Site Management

Keeping a few client sites updated, monitored and reported on usually means a login per site, a spreadsheet of plugin versions and a Monday morning spent finding out what broke over the weekend. InstaManage is how InstaWP handles that WordPress site management from one place, the Manage section of your dashboard, whether the site runs on InstaWP’s managed WordPress hosting or on another host.

Every site runs on one of two tiers, Basic or Advanced. This guide covers what each tier does, which sites get Advanced at no extra cost, and what site management does not cover, so you can set client expectations from day one.

What Is InstaManage?

Every site you manage shows up in one list (the core of managing multiple WordPress sites from one dashboard), with its status, uptime, security risk and performance score on a single row. You can tell at a glance which site needs you this morning and which ones are fine.

Sites get into that list two ways. Sites you host with InstaWP managed hosting are there already. Sites on any other host join through the free InstaWP Connect plugin: install it once, connect the site, and manage it from the same dashboard as everything else.

Which InstaManage Tier Does Your Site Get?

The rule follows your hosting plan. Hosted sites on Plus ($9/mo) and above run on Advanced automatically, with no add-on and no separate invoice. Sandbox and Starter sites run on Basic.

A site hosted somewhere else starts on Basic for free. You can move it to Advanced for $2 a month, one site at a time, so you only pay for the sites where you need monitoring and reports. Move a hosted site from Starter to Plus and its tier switches to Advanced as part of the same plan change.

What Does InstaManage Basic Include?

Basic covers the jobs you do by hand, many times a week. It removes the password hunting and the tab switching, and leaves the judgement to you.

• Magic login: one click into wp-admin. You pick which WordPress user the button signs in as.
• Plugins and themes: install by slug or .zip URL, activate, deactivate and update, and set auto-updates for each plugin or theme.
• Bulk updates: tick sites in the Manage list and update or install plugins and themes across all of them in one pass, with per-site progress as it runs. More on this in our guide to managing multiple WordPress sites for free.
• Users: add WordPress users without logging in, or copy a temporary login link that expires after 6 hours. Handy for a contractor who needs access for one afternoon.
• Staging and 2-way sync: pull a staging copy of a connected site into InstaWP, test the change there, then push back only what you choose with 2-way sync.
• Database editor and cache purge: browse tables, run SQL, export data and clear the cache from the dashboard.

Basic is enough when you are the monitoring system: you look at your sites yourself, you know which ones matter, and what you mostly need is a fast way into them.

What Does InstaManage Advanced Add?

Advanced keeps everything in Basic and adds the parts that run while you are working on something else. Most of it lives under Advanced Options in the site menu, and the site dashboard gains 30-day trend graphs for performance and vulnerabilities.

Uptime and SSL monitoring

Checks run from several regions and keep a response-time history, plus a countdown to the SSL certificate expiry date. When a site goes down you get an email, and a Slack message too if you add a webhook. You hear again when it is back up. Setup steps are in the uptime monitoring docs, and our uptime monitoring guide for agencies covers what to watch.

Vulnerability and performance scanners

The vulnerability scanner checks WordPress core and every installed plugin and theme against known vulnerabilities, automatically or when you click New Scan. Here is how to read a WordPress vulnerability scan. The performance scanner scores the site on mobile and desktop and lists what to fix, things like unused JavaScript or a slow server response, the same signals behind Core Web Vitals. Automated scans run on their own, and you can trigger a manual performance scan once every 24 hours.

Activity logs and alert rules

Every change to posts, plugins, themes, users, logins and settings is recorded in the activity log, with who made it and when, and you can filter by severity or action type. When a client says the site broke on its own, this is where you find out what actually moved. Alert rules turn any activity you care about, such as a plugin being deleted or a failed login, into an email notification.

Scheduled updates and the config manager

Pick a frequency and a time in your own timezone, then tick core, plugins, themes or all three. Updates go out on schedule, even in a week when nobody remembers them. (For how WordPress handles updates on its own, see the WordPress.org upgrade guide.) The config manager lets you change wp-config.php constants (documented in the wp-config.php reference) such as WP_DEBUG from the dashboard, without opening a file over SFTP.

Client reports

Generate a PDF report for any period from this week to last year, and choose its sections: Summary, Performance, Uptime History, Security Scan and Activity Logs (see what to include in a maintenance report). Send it to the client right away, or schedule it to go out on repeat. If you sell website care plans, the report is the thing the client sees every month, and it shows the work you did. See how to generate PDF reports.

How Do InstaManage Basic and Advanced Compare?

Here is the full list, feature by feature.

What Does Advanced Do in a Normal Week?

Each Advanced feature is useful on its own. Together they take six recurring jobs off your to-do list.

What Does InstaManage Not Cover?

Two things people expect from InstaManage actually belong to other parts of InstaWP. Knowing this up front saves a surprised client later.

Backups come with hosting. Every site hosted with InstaWP gets automatic off-site backups with one-click restore, weekly on Starter and daily on Plus and up. Connected sites keep their backups at their current host for now. Backups for connected sites are on the roadmap.

White-label reports are on the way. Reports cannot carry your own branding yet. If you want clients to see your brand today, that is the job of Portal, a client panel on your own domain with your logo and colors.

Which InstaManage Tier Do You Need?

• You host with us on Plus or above: nothing to decide. Advanced is already on. Open Manage, switch on the monitors and schedules you want, and set up the first client report.
• You host with us on Starter: you have Basic. If a site needs monitoring and reports, moving it to Plus also brings daily backups and the Premium CDN.
• Your client sites live on other hosts: connect them all free on Basic, then pay $2 a month only for the sites you monitor and report on. Or move them over with a free migration to InstaWP.
• You sell care plans: put every site you bill for on Advanced (our care plan guide covers packaging and pricing). Scheduled updates, scans and a monthly report cover most of what a care plan promises.

InstaManage: Frequently Asked Questions