Launching a WordPress site is a milestone, but it is not the finish line. The day a site goes live is the day maintenance begins. Plugins need updating. Security patches need applying. Databases accumulate bloat. SSL certificates expire. Hosting environments shift. And through all of it, the site needs to keep performing for the client’s customers.
For agencies, maintenance is both an operational responsibility and a revenue opportunity. A structured maintenance program protects client sites, reduces emergency fire drills, and creates predictable recurring revenue. The agencies that treat maintenance as a serious service — rather than an afterthought — build stronger client relationships and more sustainable businesses.
This checklist organizes WordPress maintenance into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks. It is designed for agencies managing multiple client sites at scale.
Daily Maintenance Tasks
Daily tasks are automated. No human should be performing these manually — they should be handled by monitoring tools that alert the team only when something requires attention.
Uptime Monitoring
Monitor every client site for uptime at intervals no longer than five minutes. When a site goes down, the monitoring system should alert the responsible team member immediately via Slack, email, or SMS. Tools like UptimeRobot, Pingdom, and Better Stack provide this functionality with minimal configuration. The goal is to detect downtime before the client does — and ideally before their customers notice.
Automated Backups
Run automated daily backups of both the database and the complete file system. Store backups in a location separate from the web server — Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or a dedicated backup service like BlogVault or UpdraftPlus with remote storage configured. Verify that backup jobs complete successfully each day. A backup that silently fails for two weeks is worse than no backup at all, because it creates false confidence.
Security Scanning
Run automated malware and vulnerability scans daily. Services like Sucuri SiteCheck, Wordfence, and Patchstack scan for known malware signatures, blocklist status, and newly disclosed plugin vulnerabilities. Configure alerts for any findings that require human review. Most scans complete in seconds and consume negligible server resources.
Weekly Maintenance Tasks
Weekly tasks require human judgment but follow a repeatable process. These are the core of an agency’s maintenance workflow.
Plugin, Theme, and Core Updates
Review available updates for WordPress core, all active plugins, and the active theme. Test updates in a staging environment before applying them to the live site. For minor WordPress core releases (security patches), apply them promptly — within 24 to 48 hours of release. For major core releases, allow one to two weeks for the community to identify any issues before updating client sites.
Plugin updates require more caution. Read the changelog for each update. Updates that fix security vulnerabilities should be applied immediately. Updates that introduce new features or major refactors should be tested thoroughly in staging. Keep a log of every update applied, including the version number and date, to simplify troubleshooting if issues arise later.
Broken Link and 404 Monitoring
Scan for broken internal and external links. Broken links degrade user experience and can harm SEO rankings. Tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or the Broken Link Checker plugin can identify broken links across the site. Fix internal broken links immediately. For external links pointing to pages that no longer exist, either update the URL or remove the link.
Comment and Spam Management
If the site accepts comments, review and moderate the comment queue weekly. Delete spam comments that bypassed the spam filter. Akismet handles the bulk of spam filtering, but manual review catches what automated tools miss. For sites that do not need comments, disable them entirely — open comment forms are an unnecessary attack surface and spam magnet.
Monthly Maintenance Tasks
Monthly tasks focus on optimization, performance, and proactive improvements that prevent problems from accumulating.
Performance Review
Run a full performance audit using Google PageSpeed Insights and measure Core Web Vitals (LCP, INP, CLS). Compare results against the previous month to identify regressions. A new plugin, an unoptimized image uploaded by the client, or a third-party script added to the header can silently degrade performance over time. Catching these regressions monthly prevents them from compounding.
Database Optimization
Clean up the WordPress database monthly. Delete post revisions beyond the retention limit, remove expired transients from the options table, clear trashed posts and comments, and remove orphaned metadata from deleted plugins. Optimize database tables to reclaim space and improve query performance. WP-CLI makes this scriptable: a single command can clean revisions, transients, and spam across all client sites.
User Account Audit
Review all user accounts on each client site. Remove accounts that are no longer active. Verify that each account has the appropriate role — content editors should not have administrator access. Check for accounts with weak passwords or accounts created by plugins that are no longer in use. Dormant administrator accounts are one of the most common security blind spots.
Backup Restoration Test
Restore a recent backup to a staging environment and verify that it works correctly. Confirm that the database is complete, the file system is intact, media files are present, and the site functions as expected. A backup that cannot be restored is worthless. Monthly restoration tests ensure that when a real emergency occurs, the recovery process works as documented.
SSL Certificate Check
Verify that the SSL certificate is valid and not approaching expiration. Most certificates auto-renew through Let’s Encrypt or the hosting provider, but auto-renewal can fail silently due to DNS changes, server configuration issues, or hosting migrations. A monthly check catches pending expirations before they result in browser security warnings that scare visitors away.
Quarterly Maintenance Tasks
Quarterly tasks are strategic reviews that assess the health and relevance of the entire WordPress installation.
Plugin Audit
Review every installed plugin against three criteria: Is it still actively maintained by the developer? Is it still needed? Is there a better alternative? Plugins that have not received updates in over a year are security risks and should be replaced. Plugins that were installed for a one-time purpose and are no longer needed should be removed. Every plugin on the site should justify its presence.
SEO Health Check
Run a technical SEO audit. Verify that the sitemap is current and submitted to Google Search Console. Check for crawl errors, indexing issues, and mobile usability problems. Review the robots.txt file to ensure it is not accidentally blocking important pages. Confirm that structured data is valid and rendering correctly. Tools like Screaming Frog, Ahrefs, or Google Search Console provide the data needed for this review.
Hosting Environment Review
Evaluate the hosting environment. Is the PHP version current? Is the server running the latest stable MySQL or MariaDB version? Is the server’s storage approaching capacity? Are traffic patterns changing in ways that might require a plan upgrade or server scaling? Quarterly hosting reviews prevent the slow creep of infrastructure debt that eventually manifests as performance problems or outages.
Client Reporting
Deliver a quarterly maintenance report to each client. Include uptime statistics, updates applied, security scans completed, performance metrics, and any issues identified and resolved. This report serves two purposes: it demonstrates the value of the maintenance retainer, and it gives the client visibility into work that is otherwise invisible. Agencies that communicate maintenance value retain clients longer and face fewer pricing objections at renewal.
Where a White-Label Partner Fits
Managing maintenance across dozens or hundreds of client sites requires dedicated processes, tooling, and team capacity. For agencies that want to offer maintenance services without building an internal operations team, a white-label maintenance partner handles the execution — updates, monitoring, backups, security scanning, and performance optimization — while your agency owns the client relationship and delivers the reporting. This lets you scale your maintenance offering without proportionally scaling your team.