Up and running in about ten minutes.
SteerWP has two parts: the main plugin on your own site, and a lightweight client plugin on each site you manage.
Install SteerWP on your main site
Install and activate the free SteerWP plugin from WordPress.org on the site you want to manage everything from — usually your agency site or a dedicated dashboard install. This becomes your control center.
Open the SteerWP dashboard
After activation, SteerWP appears in your wp-admin menu. The dashboard is where your entire fleet will live: sites, clients, updates, backups, and reports in one place.
Install SteerWP Client on each managed site
On every client site, install and activate the SteerWP Client plugin from WordPress.org. It is intentionally lightweight and has no settings for your clients to break.
Connect the site to your dashboard
Add the site in your SteerWP dashboard and authorize the connection between the two plugins. Once connected, the site appears in your fleet with one-click wp-admin login, update status, and monitoring active.
Upgrading to Pro? Activate your license key from the checkout email under SteerWP settings, and every add-on becomes available immediately. No separate downloads.
Your fleet, organized your way.
Adding a site
Use Add Site in your dashboard, enter the site URL, and authorize the connection. The client plugin must be active on the receiving site first.
One-click wp-admin login
Once connected, every site row gives you direct wp-admin access without storing or typing passwords. Access is permission-controlled per team member.
Organizing with groups and clients
Assign each site to a client and group sites however you work: by client, by hosting, by care plan tier. Bulk actions respect your groups.
Granular team permissions
Control which team members see which sites and which actions they can run. A junior can run updates without ever seeing billing or proposals.
The free core, feature by feature.
Bulk updates
Select any combination of sites and update plugins, themes, and core in one action. Update status per site is visible at a glance from the dashboard, so nothing sits outdated without you knowing.
Uptime monitoring
Monitoring is active for every connected site. When a site goes down you get an alert, and the dashboard Down counter shows fleet status the moment you log in.
Broken link scanner
Scan any site for broken internal and external links before a client or their visitors find them. Results are listed per site with the page each broken link lives on.
Content Composer
Write a post once and push it to any number of client sites. Featured images and formatting travel with it. Pair with SteerWP SEO to push meta alongside the content.
Activity log & documents
Every action across your fleet is logged: who updated what, when, and where. Each client also has a Documents tab where contracts, reports, and files stay attached to the relationship.
White Label
Rebrand the client-side experience with your agency name and logo, so what clients see is your maintenance service, not a third-party tool.
Setting up each add-on.
Full walkthroughs of every capability are on the Add-ons page.
Backup Pro
Connect S3, Google Drive, Dropbox, or any S3-compatible storage in settings, then set a daily or weekly schedule per site. Restores always take a safety snapshot first. If a scheduled backup fails, the alert email includes the exact error.
Proposal Builder
Create a proposal from a template and industry preset, add line items with tax and discounts, and send the client their signing link. On acceptance the signed PDF and SHA-256 audit certificate are generated and stored automatically.
Site Health Reporter
Generate a branded PDF report per site or in bulk. Set your logo, colors, and contact details once in White Label settings. Enable the monthly schedule and reports email themselves to clients.
Security Pro
Works with the Wordfence or Solid Security install already on each client site. The fleet view ranks sites worst-first; delta alerts fire only when something new appears. Sites without a security plugin get the 8-point native audit.
Slack & Teams Notifications
Paste a Slack or Teams webhook URL, pick which event categories the channel receives, and optionally enable failures-only mode. Notifications are non-blocking and never slow the dashboard.
Migrator
Point Migrator at your existing management tool to import sites, groups, and client assignments via direct database read, or use CSV import for anything else. Verify the fleet, then archive the old tool.
SteerWP SEO
Fill in the SEO fields while drafting in Content Composer: title, description, focus keyword, canonical, noindex, and Open Graph. On push, each receiving site stores the meta in whichever SEO plugin it runs — Yoast, Rank Math, or AIOSEO.
When something is not behaving.
A site will not connect
Confirm the SteerWP Client plugin is installed and active on that site, and that the site URL matches exactly, including https. Security plugins or hosts that block the WordPress REST API can also block the connection — whitelist your dashboard site and retry.
Backups are failing
The failure alert email includes the exact error. The most common causes are expired or mistyped cloud storage credentials, insufficient storage space, and hosts with very low PHP execution limits. Re-save your storage connection and run a manual backup to test.
Updates are not appearing for a site
Trigger a manual sync for that site from the dashboard. If it persists, the client site may be caching aggressively or a maintenance plugin may be interfering — clear the site cache and sync again.
White Label branding is not showing
White Label settings apply to client-facing output such as reports and the client plugin presentation. After changing branding, regenerate the report or resync the site to see the update.
My license will not activate
License keys are delivered by email from Freemius at purchase. Activation requires an outbound connection from your site to Freemius; some firewalls block it. If the key is rejected, contact support with your order email and we will reset the activation.
Something else is broken
Email support with the site URL, what you expected, and what happened instead. Pro customers get priority responses from the team that built the product — not a tier-1 script.
Stuck? Ask the people
who built it.
A detailed Knowledge Base lives inside your SteerWP dashboard, with the Ask assistant on hand for instant answers while you work. For everything else, email lands with the team directly.