MaintainHQ vs Glow
Glow brings support tickets, time tracking and maintenance together. MaintainHQ puts an engineer on the maintenance side.
Facts checked on 4 November 2026. Prices taken from each vendor's own website.
The short answer
MaintainHQ
MaintainHQ is a cloud maintenance platform for agencies and freelancers. Gus, the AI WordPress engineer, diagnoses problems and fixes them with your approval, on staging or production as you choose, checked against WordPress coding standards, verified, and rolled back automatically if anything goes wrong. Around Gus you get safe updates with pre-update testing, backups, malware scanning, uptime with incident autopilot, team roles, white-label PDF reports and an API with an MCP server.
Choose MaintainHQ if
- You want problems fixed by Gus, with approval, verification and rollback
- You want pre-update testing, malware scanning and incident autopilot
- You want an API and MCP server over your whole portfolio
Glow (getglow.io)
Glow (getglow.io) is a UK-built maintenance and support dashboard for WordPress agencies. Alongside updates, uptime, performance and vulnerability monitoring and backups, it has a support ticket system clients can use by email, time tracking with monthly allowances per client, and client reports that show time spent. It connects through an open-source plugin on WordPress.org and is priced from $1.95 per site per month, with the first site free and unlimited team seats.
Choose Glow (getglow.io) if
- Support tickets and time tracking per client are central to your care plans
- You want unlimited team seats on a per-site price
- You manage a small number of sites and want a low per-site price
Side by side
| Feature | MaintainHQ | Glow (getglow.io) |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cloud maintenance platform with an AI WordPress engineer (Gus). Works with sites on any host. | Cloud maintenance and support dashboard priced per site |
| Updates | Bulk plugin updates, plus safe auto-updates with lanes, soak times, fleet waves and approval for major versions | Two-way WordPress updates |
| Backups | Scheduled and on-demand, incremental between full backups, retention you control with pinning, restore with a safety backup and automatic rollback | Backups included |
| Uptime and incidents | Uptime, SSL expiry and PHP error monitoring, public status pages, and incident autopilot: Gus diagnoses an outage and drafts the fix and status update for your approval | Uptime and performance monitoring |
| Security | Daily read-only malware scan of files and database, vulnerability alerts matched to installed versions, firewall, hardening, login lockout and core file integrity checks | Vulnerability monitoring |
| Reports and white label | PDF client reports emailed on a schedule; white-label branding, sending address and portal domain on Agency | Automated client reports including time spent |
| Team roles | Admin, member, viewer and client roles, limited to chosen sites if you like (1 seat on Starter, 2 on Starter Plus, 5 on Pro, unlimited on Agency) | Unlimited team seats |
| AI that fixes | Gus diagnoses and fixes: your approval for every fix, on staging or production as you choose, WordPress coding-standards checks, a backup, verification and automatic rollback | Not found in their public documentation |
| Pricing model | Flat plans: Starter $2.99/mo (1 site), Starter Plus $29/mo (5), Pro $79/mo (25), Agency $199/mo (unlimited). 7-day free trial. Gus is on every plan, with an allowance that resets every 6 hours and a weekly allowance, bigger on bigger plans. | From $1.95 per site per month, first site free |
Is MaintainHQ cheaper than Glow (getglow.io)?
Glow is from $1.95 per site per month with the first site free, billed in US dollars. MaintainHQ is a flat plan per tier and includes Gus.
| Sites | MaintainHQ | Glow (getglow.io) |
|---|---|---|
| Free or entry | Starter: $2.99/mo for 1 site | First site free |
| A handful of sites | Starter Plus: $29/mo for 5 sites | From $1.95 per site per month |
| 50 sites and more | Agency: $199/mo for unlimited sites (founding agencies $149/mo) | From $1.95 per site per month; yearly billing is cheaper |
Moving to MaintainHQ
Step 1: Paste your site addresses into the MaintainHQ importer (Sites, Import). It removes duplicates and shows a preview before anything is created.
Step 2: Each site gets a signed connector link that is valid for 24 hours. Install the MaintainHQ connector plugin with it; the connector runs alongside other management plugins, so you can keep Glow connected while you compare.
Step 3: Turn on backups, safe auto-updates and monitoring in MaintainHQ, then switch off the overlapping jobs in Glow so only one tool runs updates on each site.
Questions
Does MaintainHQ have support tickets and time tracking?
MaintainHQ has a helpdesk where Gus drafts replies and prepares fixes, but it does not track time against client allowances. If time tracking per client is how you sell care plans, Glow does that well.
Can I run MaintainHQ alongside Glow?
Yes. The MaintainHQ connector is an ordinary WordPress plugin and runs alongside other plugins, Glow included. The one thing to avoid is two tools auto-updating the same site, so pick one to own updates on each site.
What does Gus actually do?
Gus is the AI WordPress engineer built into MaintainHQ. It inspects a site, finds the cause of a problem and prepares a fix. Code changes are checked against WordPress coding standards and wait for your approval, then go to staging or production as you choose, after a backup. They are verified afterwards and roll back automatically if the site gets worse. Every change has a receipt you can share with the client.
Facts about Glow (getglow.io) checked on 4 November 2026 from their public websites. Prices and features change; if something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it. Product names belong to their owners.
Try MaintainHQ free
From $2.99 a month for 1 site, with a 7-day trial. Connect your first site in minutes and let Gus run a health check.