MaintainHQ vs Jetpack Manage
Automattic for Agencies is free to join and you buy Jetpack licences per site. MaintainHQ includes everything in one plan, plus Gus.
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 one flat price rather than licences per site
- You want Gus to fix problems, with approval and rollback
- You want safe updates with pre-update testing
Jetpack Manage
Automattic for Agencies (which includes the Jetpack Manage sites dashboard) is free to join. You pay for the products you use on client sites, with volume discounts on licences from 10% at 5 licences to 80% at 100 or more. Downtime monitoring is free; Jetpack VaultPress Backup and Scan are paid licences for sites outside Pressable and WordPress.com.
Choose Jetpack Manage if
- Your sites already run Jetpack and you want Automattic products
- You host on Pressable or WordPress.com, where backups and scanning are included
- You want referral revenue from Automattic products
Side by side
- Included
- Paid add-on
- Not available
| Feature | MaintainHQ | Jetpack Manage |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cloud maintenance platform with an AI WordPress engineer (Gus). Works with sites on any host. | Free agency dashboard with paid Jetpack licences |
| Backups | Scheduled and on-demand, incremental between full backups, retention you control with pinning, restore with a safety backup and automatic rollback | Jetpack VaultPress Backup licence (paid outside Pressable and WordPress.com) |
| 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 | Jetpack Scan licence (paid outside Pressable and WordPress.com) |
| 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 | Free downtime monitoring with email or mobile alerts |
| 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 offered in the dashboard |
| 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. | Free to join; licences per site with volume discounts |
Is MaintainHQ cheaper than Jetpack Manage?
The dashboard is free and Jetpack licences are paid per site with volume discounts. MaintainHQ is a flat plan with backups, malware scanning and Gus included.
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 Jetpack Manage connected while you compare.
Step 3: Turn on backups, safe auto-updates and monitoring in MaintainHQ, then switch off the overlapping jobs in Jetpack Manage so only one tool runs updates on each site.
Questions
Do I need to remove Jetpack to use MaintainHQ?
No. MaintainHQ works next to Jetpack. Some agencies keep Jetpack Backup as a second copy and let MaintainHQ run updates, monitoring and Gus.
Can I run MaintainHQ alongside Jetpack?
Yes. The MaintainHQ connector is an ordinary WordPress plugin and runs alongside other plugins, Jetpack included. The one thing to avoid is two tools auto-updating the same site, so pick one to own updates on each site.
Facts about Jetpack Manage 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.