438 - Why I Moved from ManageWP to WPUmbrella

It's official. I recently moved from ManageWP to WPUmbrella for managing my WordPress sites.

This episode covers in detail why I left ManageWP and why I personally feel I can trust WPUmbrella for the long term.

This is the audio from the full new video so to see all the visuals, head to the full video at: https://youtu.be/Z-kTkGKld7w

Head to the show notes to get all links and resources we mentioned, along with a full transcription of this episode at joshhall.co/438

Transcript

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Big Announcement And What Changed

Josh Hall 0:00

Hello, my friends. It's so good to have you here on the podcast. And this episode is a big one because I am officially announcing publicly that I have moved from managed WP to WP umbrella for managing my WordPress websites. This is big on a couple levels for me personally because number one, I've been using Managed WP for over a decade, so it was not a decision I made lately. And number two, it's something that I've recommended to a lot of students and a lot of colleagues over the years. It's featured inside of what my uh website maintenance plan course, which is going to be revamped here soon. And I wanted to get, I wanted to kind of dedicate an exclusive episode about this to kind of share one of two things. Number one, why I decided to make this big move in my business and pivot from managed WP. And number two, why I truthfully feel that a WP umbrella is going to be the best fit for me long term. And then it's going to be a tool that I feel comfortable referring my students, my community members, my colleagues to for many years moving forward. So that's what we're going to dive into. Now, this is actually a new YouTube video that's live on my YouTube channel. So I'm going to link it below. And I do talk about quite a few different links. So they're going to be found at the episode show notes for this one, which is going to be at joshhall.co slash 438. So head over there for all the links mentioned. But this, what I'm going to play for you, is actually the audio from the video that is on my YouTube channel now, um, getting into why I decided to leave Manage and why I chose WP Umbrella. So just know you're going to hear some things here that are referenced in video form and more visual. So I would highly recommend checking out the video. Uh leave a comment there if you would as well. I'm curious to see what kind of feedback I'm going to get on this one, just because I'm noticing a lot of people moving from Manage WP, which I do share about in the video. Um but again, this is just the audio version of that video. So check that out if you would. Links below. Again, joshhall.co slash 438 to get all the links that we mentioned.

Links, Video Notes, And Trial Bonus

Josh Hall 2:12

And I'm going to mention this up front here on the podcast, and that is if you are ready to move either from manage WP or any other website maintenance platform that you're using because you're not happy or satisfied for any reason, and you want to give umbrella a go yourself, use my link, joshhall.co slash umbrella, and then I'll put this below as well. But if you use the code Josh Hall WPU at checkout, you're going to get an additional whole month free of WP Umbrella on top of your free trial. So Josh Hall.co slash umbrella with the code Josh Hall WPU. That is what to use to get your additional 30 days for free on top of a free trial. All right, friends, here is the audio from the full video. Links below. Um, again, as to why I decided to leave Manage WP. Here we go. So

GoDaddy Acquisition And Feature Stagnation

Josh Hall 3:00

let's dig in first to why I decided to leave Managed WP when I've been using them for over a decade. And it really all started back when GoDaddy acquired Managed WP back in 2016. Now, I had just started using Managed WP shortly before this, so I was initially very concerned that it might potentially go downhill, not because of anything due to necessarily GoDaddy, but just with any corporate buyout, typically you see a platform get stagnant and then go downhill pretty quickly. That wasn't the case back then, but it did plant the seed of doubt for more long term. The biggest thing I realized over time was that they just didn't innovate. They really didn't do, and there's a case to be made that maybe if it ain't broke, don't fix it. But I found that over the years, aside from like I think one slight innovation with the look of the dashboard, that was like the only feature innovation. There may have been some minor ones. But one thing that I was concerned about was I saw all these other platforms like WP Umbrella that were just making like leaps and bounds with new innovations and keeping up with technology and just connecting better with different hosts, and it just seemed like Managed WP was just kind of stalled. Then something happened more recently that was the straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. And that

Hacks At Scale And Security Concerns

Josh Hall 4:18

was when some of the members of my community, Web Designer Pro, were mentioning that they were getting hacked. And it looked like there were a lot of these type of situations going on. Some that were directly due to managed WP's security and access, but then some that were unrelated because I know they had a big hacker. Yeah, hackers here were basically setting up like false Google ads to get Managed WP logins. Again, not in their control and their defense on that one, but there was just a lot of this happening. And then I had one member in Web Designer Pro, actually a couple who had literally hundreds of websites they were managing, and they had hacks and breaches at scale that were happening. And again, it just looked like because of maybe the stagnation or a lack of security hardening, from what I saw, it looked like managed WP was the link between all those hacks at scale. Again, that's what really prompted me to make the move. Now, around the same time, I kept on hearing this term umbrella inside of my community Web Designer Pro. Umbrella, umbrella, umbrella. And I had members who were more savvy to umbrella before even I got on it. In fact, just inside of Web Designer Pro here, just searching the term WP Umbrella, you can see how many members. Yeah, back in 2024, Mark moved from managed WP over to WP Umbrella. We had quite a few members, yeah, even a couple years ago, start to move here. This member Pandora talked about WP Umbrella's stance and what they're doing right. Um,

First Impressions Of WP Umbrella UX

Josh Hall 5:42

and then I found that a lot of members were just really impressed by the UX, the design, the modern feel of WP Umbrella, which is really the first reason I was sold on WP Umbrella is their design, their UX, the user experience. It is absolutely best in class. It is very modern. It is very clear from a standpoint of either managing a few sites or a lot of sites if you're managing maybe tens or dozens or hundreds. And we'll just take a look here in my umbrella account where I'm managing Web Designer Pro now. It's modern, it's sleek, it's snappy. And the next reason I love them is that they cover everything that you need when it comes to managing and updating WordPress sites. There's a few main aspects that I look for in any one of these platforms. And Umbrella has continued to be best in class in all these, from monitoring to WordPress management for updating plugins, backups. We'll get into some of these in a little more detail here. Security, which is absolutely top-notch compared to other platforms. And then they'll even go further into reporting and some other aspects here. Of course, you can manage team and you can have a different space for clients. But let's start with the monitoring as we walk through these here. Yeah, it's just it's the most robust that I've seen compared to all the other platforms. And again, they're innovating nonstop. Really good details on performance. They have a broken link checker that's native right here. And then one thing I love and appreciate about their WordPress management when it comes to updating plugins and themes in the core is it gives you multiple update options.

Safer Updates Plus Backups That Scale

Josh Hall 7:13

If you've ever had a WordPress site and you did an update and it broke, that's where this comes in because not only do they have backups and restore points that you can customize yourself, but you could do a quick update if it is an update that is uh, you know, not a major update. You can do a classic safe and then you can do an advanced safe, and it'll walk you through exactly when and where to use these different updates styles. So this is just a small plug-in update on this one, so I'll just do the update like that. But again, you can of course do this in bulk. You can bulk manage them by plug-in, by theme, however you do it, however you want to do it, depending on how many sites you have in here. But I love that I really, really appreciate the fact that WP Umbrella gives you these other options here. In this case, we're just going to update the theme, but particularly with plugins, that can be super, super handy to have the advanced option, even when you want that. The backup options, again, best in class when it comes to not only backing up your sites, restoration, and you can deploy these in between different sites in your WP umbrella. But it is really cool because you can literally set all of your backups to daily or hourly or weekly or monthly. So you can go through here, you can, yeah, you can do it daily, I could set it hourly, and then depending on what type of sites you're backing up, this is where WP umbrella kind of grows with you. In my case, I'm only managing a few sites in my WP umbrella since I'm not actively manage client managing client sites anymore. So I generally do these weekly or monthly, depending on how many edits. But if you have an e-commerce site, for example, then this can grow with you because you can do the hourly updates and the plan will kind of grow with you as you charge more for hosting and support and maintenance for your clients. But you have a lot of options here for backing up WordPress files, databases, et cetera.

Security Hardening Firewall And Activity Logs

Josh Hall 8:59

Now, we're gonna take to my third main point here because I want to drill down to the security aspect and why WP Umbrella is far and away the best when it comes to security. In a lot of cases, you don't even need to use another platform like hosting firewalls or security or additional caching or security or WordFence because WP Umbrella has a lot baked in. And yes, you can enable more advanced security, especially if you're charging more for sites that have that. But out of the box, it is the absolute best. Like I mentioned, we had a lot of members of my community get hit through managed WP, which is why so many members sort of flocking away from them and coming to Umbrella. And this is a large part of the reason. Look at all the options you can enable if you want to really harden the security. Now, I haven't taken the steps to do all this, and again, this is all baked in WP Umbrella. You can enable all of them, or you can go one by one. You can play around with this, especially depending on your setup and your hosting and what type of access you have on your sites. I'll stack this up against any other WordPress management platform, and I guarantee WP Umbrella has far and away the most options for hardening that. That again is baked into the platform. Vulnerabilities, malware scans, and a firewall. Instead of using WordFence or Security for an extra firewall, which for those who don't know, firewall is kind of like a almost like a security net that is around your site that's just blocking bad traffic and bots. This you can enable it right here. And again, the pricing kind of scales up with you depending on how many sites you may need more advanced security for. And something one of the members of Web Designer Pro who had a lot of hacks recently through Manage WP, mentioned that they love is the activity log. And this can give you all the failed signup attempts. If it's you or whether you have a team or uh a tech team or development team that is helping you with your activity logs, then you're gonna see everything that's happening right through here inside of Umbrella. That can all be in your reports, by

Client Reports You Can Automate

Josh Hall 11:02

the way. Yes, you can create reports in bulk for all your clients, and you can set all these reports to feature any or all the information you want, whether it's an overview, traffic, and visitors, depending on what you have enabled. You can even show uptime, you can show performance of your sites that all go out into a monthly report for your clients as a perk of your maintenance and hosting plan. Updates, security, all that can be right in the reporting feature. We won't dig into this too far here, but yeah, you can you can go through here and you can see you can set up your general settings when you want to do reports. You can move over to the email content and then actually save your reporting as a template to make this super easy moving forward. You can customize the actual PDF that is going to be sent to your clients. And then you can select what features you want here, which is what I just saw you on this report. You can include multiple sites, you can include multiple people or just one other integrations. You can schedule these out and you can review them. You can automate this entire process inside of WP Umbrella. Now, as I mentioned, WP Umbrella is constantly innovating. And one thing I've really appreciated about them is their CEO Aurelio, particularly on LinkedIn, is really open. And we'll get to the team here next, but they are constantly posting about all of the innovations and features and updates. And they do this in their newsletter as well. But yeah, to hear directly from the CEO Aurelio himself, it gives me a lot of trust. And I've loved just going, just following him on LinkedIn again, in particular where he posts mostly, and I'm just seeing all of the updates. Like we had a lot of discussions, and I let him know members were asking for this type of feature. And I'm not gonna say this cloning feature was directly because of me and Web Design are pro members, but by golly, I don't know if it was coincidence. We were really pushing for this, and you can see a month ago we asked, they built it. They now have the cloning feature inside of WP Umbrella, and that was something that was on their list. They were they really do a great job of listening to customers, and they are innovating and releasing features constantly. And again, that's something that I appreciate after using Manage WP, which definitely got stale over the last several

Transparent Leadership Innovation And Final CTA

Josh Hall 13:11

years. Another feature I really appreciate, we kind of looked at this already, but the pricing scales up with you. So if you're just managing a few sites, it's going to be ridiculously affordable. If you're managing hundreds of sites, it's still going to be ridiculously affordable because, of course, you are charging for your hosting and maintenance plans, right? So Umbrella can scale with you. And it is, it's really cool that you can add on more security when you need to and hourly backups when you need to. So it is a really good example of like meeting people where they are in business. And actually, Aurelio was on my podcast, the Web Design Business Podcast. And something he said in this conversation, I'll make sure this is linked below, is one of the differences between them is they're so active with their customers, and they're truly listening and keeping a pulse on like what's being requested. And I got a really good sense of why WP Umbrella is making such great strides in the WordPress management market right now, and it's because of his leadership, honestly. And this conversation was a lot about leadership and how he's moving the company forward and keeping a very customer-centric approach. Um, and yeah, you see that when you follow him on LinkedIn. I'll make sure that's linked below as well. They are super transparent and super open about who's behind the brand, which is not always the case. Like if we look at ManageWP's team, there's marketing. And again, I don't want this to dog manage WP because it really served me very well for a long time. I just moving forward, I'm not seeing who is the leader here. You know what I mean? This is a biggie. This is a really important thing to me. All the tools that I use and trust long term have really clear leadership behind it, whether it's one person or a leadership team in here. I don't know who is casting vision for managed WP, which is, I think, a lot of the reasons why so many, again, members of my community, which you see here, have been moving from managed WP, including myself, over to WP Umbrella. So yeah, you can you can see right here, credit to Aurelio. Yeah, just a great group of people to work with. In fact, they invested in my community Web Design Pro as a sponsor of our latest Pro Con 2026 in-person event where they were one of our sponsors. So we're forever grateful that WP Umbrella sponsored our event and just had a part in bringing my community together in person for this big event. It just goes to show that they are much more than a typical SaaS company. They really are a great group of people to work with. And I, again, fully trust them long term with managing my sites. So there we go, friends. For all those reasons and more, that's why I'm so excited to have officially made the move from managed WP over to WP Umbrella. Again, it was not something that I took lightly, but after working with WP Umbrella, getting to know their team and getting to know the platform and seeing how it's not only serving me now with my sites, but also so many of my community members and Web Designer Pro, I have the utmost faith in WP Umbrella for the long term. And they are just, for all the all the reasons you saw here, they're just best in class. They are really on the front lines of making the best product for managing WordPress sites. And I just feel a level of confidence with them for the long term for managing my site. So check them out. You can go to my link, joshhall.co slash umbrella, which will give you 30 days additional free on top of an already free trial. So go to joshhall.co slash umbrella to start your free trial today. Just give it a play around, especially if you're using another platform, see how it compares. They have some great articles on their site to show the difference on how Umbrella stacks up compared to maybe a current platform that you're on. So if you want to join myself and so many Web Designer Pro members and scores of people moving over to the best WordPress management platform in the game today, I'll see you there over at WP Umbrella. Again, joshhall.co slash umbrella to get an extra 30 day trial on top of a free trial. Details and all the links below as well.