Cloudways Site Manager is the newest WordPress management experience on the Cloudways Platform that gives you full control over your WordPress websites from one centralized place.
If you manage multiple WordPress sites or simply want safer, smarter, and easier update workflows.
Cloudways Site Manager offers everything you need in one integrated tool. This includes plugin, theme, and user management, safe and quick updates, visual regression testing, performance monitoring, and WordPress SSO.
IMPORTANT — PUBLIC PREVIEW:
Cloudways Site Manager is currently in Public Preview. Public previews are preliminary releases of products and features that are ready for broader testing and usage as part of an incremental roll-out strategy. Features may change as we continue to refine and improve the experience based on real customer feedback.
Table of Contents:
Introduction to Site Manager
Site Manager is built to give you a complete, modern WordPress management experience.
It supersedes the previous Safe Update tool, which relied on WP-CLI and limiting workflows causing delays especially for agencies managing hundreds of websites.
To solve these challenges, Site Manager uses a plugin-based architecture that syncs data in seconds, reduces update times, and makes operations more reliable.
Customers can now perform updates, manage themes and plugins, add users, monitor performance, and even log in to WordPress, all from one central place inside the Cloudways Platform.
Pricing
Site Manager is available in two options:
Basic Plan (Free) – Essential daily WordPress management features
Pro Plan (Paid) – Full advanced toolkit including Safe Updates, regression testing, activity logs, performance score tracking, and more
Basic | Pro |
Site overview | Includes everything in Basic |
Manage users, Themes and Plugins | Safe Updates |
Quick Updates | Schedule Auto updates |
WordPress Single Sign-On (SSO) | Site performance monitoring |
Centralized site management dashboard | Activity Logs |
| History |
Both plans are fully integrated into your Cloudways applications and designed to make WordPress management easier than ever.
Features of Site Manager
WordPress SSO (Single Sign-On): Access your WordPress admin panel with one click from the Cloudways dashboard, without entering credentials every time.
Performance Score (PageSpeed Insights)*: Track your site’s desktop PSI score to monitor changes after updates, theme deployments, or plugin changes.
Plugin Management: Allows users to remotely manage WordPress plugins across their websites. Using this feature, users can install new plugins, activate or deactivate existing plugins, and update plugins in bulk.
Theme Management: Allows users to remotely manage WordPress themes across their websites. Using this feature, users can install new themes, activate or switch themes, and update themes in bulk.
User Management: Allows users to remotely manage WordPress users across their websites. Using this feature, users can create new users, update existing users, change user roles, reset passwords, and delete users.
Quick Operations: Allows you to install, delete, activate, deactivate, and update plugins and themes instantly, similar to how these actions are performed in the WordPress administration panel. Changes are applied directly to the live site without staging or regression testing.
Safe Operations*: Allows you to install, delete, activate, deactivate, and update plugins and themes on a temporary staging clone with complete regression testing and validation. Once everything is confirmed to be working correctly, the changes are safely applied to the production site.
Auto-Update*: You can automate weekly WordPress updates for the core, themes, and plugins, with the flexibility to run Quick Updates or Safe Updates, and customize the process by selecting only the components you want to update.
Visual Regression*: Allow you to test layout consistency for up to 5 pages on your website to ensure design elements and page structure remain unchanged after updates.
Critical Updates*: Integrated with Vulnerability Scanner, automatically push high severity or exploitable plugin or theme vulnerabilities using quick updates without waiting for a full scheduled cycle.
History*: Contains the history of schedule updates (successful or aborted) executed by the Auto Updates through the system.
Activity Logs*: Track WordPress-level activities such as plugin updates, content changes, WooCommerce product edits, and theme changes. Logs are stored offsite for better performance and retained for three months.
Centralized Dashboard: A single dashboard that lets you view and manage the status of all connected WordPress sites from one place. Specifically for agencies & freelancers managing large portfolios of WordPress sites.
Bulk Application Update: Allows you to update core, theme and plugins across multiple applications at the same time.
*These features are included in the Pro plan and are not available on the Basic (Free) plan.
How to Enable Site Manager
Follow the steps below to access the Site Manager feature and enable it for your WordPress application.
Note:
If you want to activate Site Manager across bulk application please refer to Site Manager Centralized dashboard
Step #1: Go to the Flexible Section
Log in to your Cloudways account.
From the left navigation menu, click Flexible.
Step #2: Open the Applications List
At the top, you will see two tabs: Servers and Applications.
Click the Applications tab to view all applications hosted on your Cloudways server.
You can also click on your server and open the desired application.
Step #3: Select Your WordPress Application
Under the Applications tab, you will see your application names.
Click on the WordPress application you want to manage.
You can click on the WordPress icon next to the server name
ORClick the application name directly
This will take you inside the selected application’s settings.
Step #4: Access the Site Manager Section
When the application page opens, you will see a left-side menu.
Scroll through the menu and click Site Manager.
This opens the Site Manager onboarding screen.
Step #5: Review Available Plans (Basic and Pro)
You will now see an introduction page showing what Site Manager offers. Below, you will see two plan boxes:
Step #6: Activate Site Manager
To subscribe to the Basic (Free) plan, click Start Free (1). To subscribe to the Pro plan, click Get Pro (2).
After selecting a plan, the activation process will begin, and the platform will start enabling Site Manager for your application.
You will see a loading screen that says: “Subscribing to Site Manager Plan…”
Please wait until the process completes. Once done, Site Manager Plan will be active on your WordPress application.
Overview (Overview Dashboard)
Once you subscribe to Site Manager, to access the overview dashboard go to Site Manager → Overview.
The section gives you a quick snapshot of your WordPress website and helps you understand the health and status of your website without logging into WordPress.
At the top, the App Summary section shows key information for your WordPress site:
Plugins – total installed vs allowed / active plugins
Themes – total installed vs active themes
Users – number of WordPress users
WordPress – current WordPress core version
Click WP-Admin on the right to open the WordPress dashboard in a new tab when needed.
Under App Performance, you can see performance metrics such as Largest Contentful Paint, Speed Index, and Load Time. Click View Details to open a detailed performance view.
You can also view the status and enable activity logs from the overview dashboard by clicking on ‘Enable Activity Logs’. (To disable, you will need to go to the Activity logs tab)
In the Manage Updates section, use the checkbox in the left column to select all items, or select individual plugins/themes, then click Update to apply updates or Refresh to reload the list.
Manage
The Manage allows you to manage plugins, themes and users associated with your WordPress application. The section is categorized into three subsections
Plugin Management
Theme Management
User Management
Plugin Management:
The section provides complete plugin management features from within the Cloudways Platform. To access Plugin management.
Go to Site Manager → Manage → Plugins tab.
Here you can see all installed plugins with their name, version, status (Active/Inactive), and available Update actions.
Use the checkbox at the top to select all plugins, or select individual plugins to perform bulk actions (where applicable).
For a specific plugin, click the three-dot menu (⋮) under Actions to:
Activate an inactive plugin
Update a plugin to its latest version
Delete a plugin you no longer need
5. Click Install plugin (top-right) to add a new plugin to your WordPress application either
By uploading a plugin zip file
By selecting a plugin from WordPress Repository
Theme Management
The section provides theme management features from within the Cloudways Platform. To access Theme management.
In the same Manage section, click the Themes tab.
At the top, you will see the Current Theme with its name, template, and version.
Under Your Themes, all installed themes are listed with Version, Status (Active/Inactive), and an Actions column.
Use the top checkbox to select all themes, or select individual themes for management.
To control a specific theme, click the three-dot menu (⋮) next to it and choose:
Activate – to set that theme as the active site theme
Delete – to remove unused themes from your application
6. Click Add theme to install a new WordPress theme to your WordPress application either
By uploading a plugin zip file
By selecting a plugin from WordPress Repository.
User Management
The section provides WordPress user manager so you don't need to log in to wp-admin for basic user operations to access User management.
Still under Manage section, click the Users tab.
You’ll see a list of WordPress users with their username, email address, and role (e.g., administrator).
Click Add User (top-right) to create a new WordPress user with a specific role and login.
For any existing user, click the three-dot menu (⋮) under Actions to:
WP-Admin – log in directly as that user to the WordPress dashboard
Change Password – reset the user’s password
Change Role – Change the role for selected user
Set as Default User – define the default WordPress user for SSO access.
Delete user – Delete the WordPress user along with all of their content
Delete users and transfer ownership – Delete users and transfer their content to another user
Note:
The users tab has a current listing limitation of viewing up to 500 users, this is a hard API limitation,
Auto-Updates
WordPress updates are critical to keeping your website fast, bug-free, and secure. Staying behind schedule can slow down your website and expose it to many vulnerabilities.
Updating your WordPress application essentials such as core, plugins, and themes are easy with the WordPress admin panel.
Still, it can become very tedious if you manage multiple websites or you are a digital agency that periodically manages your clients' website maintenance.
Cloudways has introduced Auto-Updates to help you automate your WordPress updates and streamline the maintenance process smoothly.
Types Of Auto-Updates:
There are two types of Auto-Updates:
Quick Updates
Quick Updates apply plugin, theme, or core changes directly to the live site with no intermediate steps.
This approach prioritizes speed, allowing updates to be completed almost instantly.
However, it offers minimal safety, as there are no backups, staging, or pre-update testing involved.
Quick Updates are best suited for low-risk changes such as minor patches, small fixes, or updates on low-traffic websites where downtime or issues would have limited impact.
Safe Updates
Safe Updates is a process designed for reliable and controlled site updates that prioritizes stability.
The Safe Updates Process includes:
Initial Backup: Before any updates are initiated, a complete backup of the production site is created. This allows for an immediate rollback if the update process is interrupted or fails.
Staging Environment: A temporary staging environment, which is an exact duplicate of the live application, is provisioned. All selected updates are applied here, not directly on the production site.
Comprehensive Testing:
Snapshots are taken and unit tests are run both before and after applying updates in the staging environment to ensure correct application functionality.
Testing includes performance checks, WordPress update validation, HTMLchecks, detection of browser console and network errors, and visual verification.
Proprietary Visual Regression Testing (VRT) algorithms compare the site visually before and after the updates.
Deployment and Rollback:
Updates are only deployed to the production application if all tests pass successfully.
If any issue is detected during the process, the update is automatically aborted.
Should a problem be detected even after deployment, Safe Updates immediately rolls back the changes, restoring the site to its last stable state using the pre-update backup.
The Auto-Update section is categorized into three subsections:
Scheduling.
Visual Regression.
Notification
Scheduling
The section provides complete control over scheduling updates for WordPress. To access Scheduling:.
Go to Site Manager → Auto Updates → Scheduling.
Enable Set Automatic Schedule Update by turning the toggle ON.
Under Day of Week and Schedule Time, choose when you want updates to run (for example, Monday at a specific UTC time window).
Click Manage Updates to open the Manage Updates configuration window:
WordPress Core – select this if you want the core to be included in scheduled updates.
Plugins – check Select All to include all plugins or select only specific plugins you want to auto-update.
Themes – check Select All or select only the themes that should be updated automatically.
After selecting the components, click Save Update Configuration to store your preferences.
In the same Scheduling tab, under Update Type, choose how you want updates to run:
Quick Update
Safe Update
If you want to automatically push security fixes, enable the Critical Updates toggle so that critical core, theme, and plugin vulnerabilities are patched proactively. (Critical Updates switch is right below Quick Update/Safe Update dropdown in the following image)
Click Save Changes to apply all scheduling and update type settings.
For point #4 ‘Configure Update List → Manage Updates’, refer to the following screenshot:
Visual Regression
By default, all on-demand Safe operations for WordPress themes and plugins specifically Safe install, Safe activate, Safe delete, and Safe deactivate as well as scheduled Safe-Update runs, perform visual regression testing only on the homepage.
To monitor other critical pages before performing any Safe operations, you can add them using the "visual regression" tab. To access visual regression tab.
In Auto Updates section, click the Visual Regression tab.
Click Add Page and enter the URL(s) of the key pages you want to monitor (for example, homepage, checkout page, or important landing pages).
Site Manager Pro can monitor up to the allowed number of 5 visual monitors per application; these will be used during Safe operations to detect layout or styling issues.
Notifications
The notification tab enables management of success, failure, and pre-update notifications for both scheduled and on-demand updates. To access notification tab:
Go to Auto Updates → Notifications.
Under Manage Notification Emails, add up to 4 email addresses that should receive update-related notifications by clicking Add More Emails.
Under I would like to receive the following notification, enable the checkboxes for the events you care about:
Pre-Notification – sends an email 24 hours before a scheduled update so you can prepare or change timing if needed.
Successful Update – notifies you when updates finish successfully.
Aborted Update – alerts you if an update is interrupted or fails, so you can take timely action.
Click Save My Preference to apply your notification settings.
WordPress Activity Logs
A WordPress activity log, also referred to as an audit or security log, is a vital report that documents all user actions and activities on your website. This tool is especially useful for tracking user actions when multiple individuals have access to the site. To access WordPress Activity Logs:
Go to Site Manager → Activity Logs.
This page shows a chronological list of important actions and changes, such as updates performed, status changes, and other application-level events.
Use Refresh to load the latest log entries.
If you ever want to pause logging, click the three-dot menu (⋮) on the top-right and select Disable Activity Logs. You can re-enable them later if needed.
Activity Logs record important WordPress activity such as:
Plugin and theme updates
Post/page edits
WooCommerce product actions
User role changes
Login activity
Comment moderation
Plugin installation or deletion
Logs are:
Only recorded after enabling Activity Logs
Stored offsite for better performance
Retained for a months
Not stored in your WordPress database
History
The History tab logs all scheduled automatic updates—whether successful or aborted. This section keeps a record of the last 30 days of updates for each application.
Go to Site Manager → History.
The History tab includes:
Updates to WordPress core, plugins, and themes
Whether each update was successful or failed
When the update was executed
Use this view to audit past maintenance events and troubleshoot any issues that may have occurred after an update.
Centralized Overview Dashboard
To access the centralized Overview dashboard, which serves as a single location for managing all connected sites using Site Manager (both Basic and Pro):
Click on Integration in the left Navigation menu.
Select Site Manager.
Or,
You can also click on Site Manager as shown in the Integration's shortcut below.
The Site Manager displays a list of all connected WordPress applications, showing the application name, plan type, available updates, PSI score, and an Actions button.
To Manage Applications:
Add New Apps: Add new app easily with this feature.
Change Plans: Select one or more applications using the checkboxes (or select all with the top checkbox) to change their plans.
Specific Actions: Click the three-dot menu (⋮) under Actions for a single application to:
Log in to WordPress via SSO (Single Sign-On).
View the Application Overview.
Manage Updates.
Manage the Plan.
Click Add Apps to Site Manager (top-right) to connect new WordPress application either on Free Plan or Pro Plan.
Enable/Disable Activity Logs Across all Pro-Apps
Users have the power to enable or disable activity logs across all or selected Site Manager Pro apps within a single view. This gives Pro users much tighter control over their data footprint.
Click on the check for Manage Applications table to bulk enable/disable activity logs or simply click on the single app which you want to enable/disable activity logs.
Select 'Choose Actions'.
Now, click on 'Enable Activity Logs'
Click Apply.
Bulk Update Manager
The Bulk Update Manager simplifies managing updates for your connected WordPress applications.
It organizes available updates into three components: core, plugins, and themes, allowing users to select exactly what they want to update.
Key steps for using the Bulk Update Manager:
Select Components: Choose the specific core, plugins, or themes you wish to update.
Choose Update Type: Decide between a QuickUpdate or a SafeUpdate.
Initiate Update: Start the update process.
Monitor Progress: Processing time will vary depending on the number and size of applications.
Receive Notification: The account owner will get an email notification once the update is finished (whether successful or failed).
Auto Updates
Customers can bulk-schedule app updates for specific days and times directly from the overview dashboard.
From the Site Manager Overview Dashboard, click on 'Auto Updates'
Now, from Auto Updates screen, click on 'Set Auto Update Schedule'
You can set the Auto Update Schedule as per your convenience. Check the following image.
Global History Tab
Cloudways introduced a unified view of all updates performed across the ecosystem. With improved filters and the ability to select multiple or all apps at once, customers can get high-level insights in seconds.
From the Overview page on the Site Manager Dashboard, Click on History to view all the global history.
Wrap-Up
Site Manager is a powerful upgrade designed to make WordPress management easier, safer, and more efficient for all Cloudways users.
Whether you manage a single website or hundreds, Site Manager brings faster updates, better visibility, centralized control, and improved safety.
This article will continue to evolve as more features are added during the Public Preview and General Availability phases.
Notes for Existing Safe Update Users
Safe Update is being replaced entirely by Site Manager.
During the Public Preview:
You can manually migrate your apps to Site Manager
No automatic migration will start until GA
After GA, all Safe Update users will be automatically moved to Site Manager
Important:
Site Manager offers more features than Safe Update at the same Pro plan price.
FAQs
Q) Can I enable Site Manager on selected apps only?
A) Yes, you have the flexibility to enable Site Manager exclusively on the specific WordPress applications you choose, rather than on all of them.
Q) Can I switch between the Free and Premium Plans?
A) Yes, you can easily change your subscription at any time, switching from the Free plan to the Premium plan or back from Premium to Free.
Q) Does Site Manager affect site performance?
A) No, Site Manager is designed to be a lightweight plugin, meaning it has a minimal impact and does not slow down your website's performance.
Q) Is the Pro version billed per server or per individual application?
A) The Pro version is billed on a per-application basis, meaning you pay for each individual WordPress application on which you enable the Pro features. It is not billed per server.
Q) Is there a free trial period available for the Pro Plan?
A) We currently do not offer a free trial for the Premium (Pro) Plan. However, you are encouraged to use the free plan, which includes limited features, to fully understand the product and its capabilities before upgrading.
Q) Does Site Manager support WordPress Multisite installations?
A) Yes, Site Manager is fully compatible with and supports WordPress Multisite network installations.
Q) Can I exclude specific plugins or themes from Auto Updates?
A) Yes, you have the option to exclude (or skip) specific themes or plugins from the automated update process, giving you more control.
Q) If a "Safe Update" fails its validation check, what happens next?
A) If the automated validation check following a "Safe Update" determines that the update caused an issue, the system automatically reverts your site to its state before the update. For more detailed steps, please refer to our troubleshooting guide within the Knowledge Base article.
Q) Can I export the Activity Logs for client reporting?
A) Yes, you can export the detailed Activity Logs, which is useful for tasks such as client reporting or internal auditing.
Q) Does the "Site Performance" feature track Page Speed insights or just server-level metrics?
A) The "Site Performance" feature tracks detailed metrics from Page Speed Insights, not just basic server-level statistics.
Q) Can I limit "User Management" capabilities to specific team members within the Cloudways Platform?
A) No, the current User Management settings within the Cloudways Platform cannot be granularly limited to specific team members for Site Manager access.
Q) Does Cloudways Site Manager automatically clear server and plugin caches after an update is performed?
A) Yes, to ensure the changes are immediately visible and the site runs smoothly, the system automatically clears both the server-level and plugin caches after an update is completed.
Q) Can I get notified via email when the Auto-Updates are successful and failed?
A) Yes, the system is configured to send you email notifications informing you whether an automated update was successful or if it failed.
That’s it! We hope this article was helpful.
Need Help?
If you need assistance, feel free to:
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Or create a support ticket anytime.
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