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Jeff Chandler

ManageWP To Soon Be Available As An iOS App

ManageWP, the service that makes it a breeze to manage multiple websites from one location has announced that they are currently developing an iOS application specifically for ManageWP. This move takes the ease of managing multiple websites to the next level. While the app is not yet available, there are a couple of screenshots of what the final product might look like.

The first screenshot shows a concept of what the dashboard might look like. I have not tested the app itself but it will be interesting to see if they manage to pack all of their sites functionality into the iPhone app while still maintaining ease of use.

ManageWP Dashboard Concept Image

What may be the most exciting part of this news is that the app will also be available to use on the iPad. With more screen real estate and the retina display on the newest version of the iPad, this combination should make for a great experience.
ManageWP iPad Concept

Pricing has yet to be determined and in some aspects, this could get tricky. While the app is no use to non ManageWP customers, will the company end up charging for the app for existing customers? Considering there are three different service plans, I could see them offering the app for free to those who are middle and top tier plan customers. I know that the folks from ManageWP monitor this website so if you have feedback on how they should go about this, please offer your feedback within the comments.

While there are alternatives to ManageWP, they are certainly experiencing healthy growth. Earlier this year, they hit the 100,000 managed websites milestone. They have also obtained 2,000 paying customers. Speaking of paying customers, I encourage you to read through the comments of a post I published about a week ago where a number of folks chimed in that while ManageWP is awesome, their prices are a bit too high to digest. Based on feedback I have observed, there are two camps. One that says ManageWP is worth every penny that they currently charge and one that says the prices are just too high.

If you believe their prices are too high, consider the following. They currently have a staff of 20 or so people with plans to add more. They are an international bunch and the company is growing rapidly. There is the infrastructure, hardware, etc that they have to pay for. In my opinion, they shouldn’t price themselves out of business. They should simply charge what they feel is right for the service.

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30 responses to “ManageWP To Soon Be Available As An iOS App”

  2. Thanks so much Jeff!

    We here at ManageWP are working very hard to create an amazing service for WordPress power users. It’s a lot of hard work, and the hours have been long; however, we would like to believe we are attempting something special that pushes the envelope.

    We thank you so much for writing about this, and we hope your incredible readers will check us out! Finally, we will do our best to make sure our iOS app will live up to expectations! :)

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  3. Hi WPTavern readers!

    We here at ManageWP just wanted to add/clarify that ManageWP for iOS will be free for our customers, regardless of what level of service you have. :)

    If you want to try out ManageWP, be sure to sign up for ManageWP (there’s no risk and it only takes a few seconds), and you’ll be the first to know when our iOS application becomes available!

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  4. @Piet – Hey Piet

    Mobile development is certainly a new arena for us to be attempting, but I’m confident that once we see how things progress with our iOS application, the idea of producing an Android application will be considered by our dev team, especially if the demand is strong.

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  5. Would love to see this as a standalone plugin you could install on your own server rather then as a service… it would be cheaper for end users and reduce your need for infrastructure… definitely a service you need when managing more then 10 sites..

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  6. I think the service is an extremely good deal. My only concern is that I’m not keen on allowing an external company to have that level of access to my site. I’d like the backup features of Manage WP without having to provide them with full access to my WordPress install.

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  7. I love the convenience of what ManageWP offers but I’m also concerned about the security more than the price. If their encryption key gets compromised then the backups of all of their customers are compromised. And those backups all contain the database login information. It just seems like it’s asking for trouble.

    I would only consider using a service like this if they provided a full trust-no-one (TNO) model where I supply my own encryption key that they never see and my data gets pre-encrypted before leaving my server. Other options might be to allow specifying my own Amazon S3 account to store backups as long as the data never goes through their servers on the way.

    The ideal would be software I can run on one of my own servers and fully control and secure. I’d be happy to pay for that.

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  8. A quick follow-up. I see that they have much more information on their security page than when I had looked before. It looks like you can back up to your own Amazon S3 account. But it’s not clear if that all happens directly from your server or if it passes through their own on the way. The description makes me think it goes through their servers first.

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  10. @Doug Smith – Hi Doug,

    We are very security-aware. No backups ever pass or are held on our servers. All backups are stored either on your server or the backup destination that you provide.

    For communication with your WordPress site, ManageWP uses OpenSSL encrypted protocal which is far more secure then the current industry standard (XML-RPC).

    Finally, if you want to run ManageWP form your server, we also offer the self-hosted version.

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  15. Jeff, the concerns raised about ManageWP’s pricing were not the usual case of whiners complaining about not getting everything for free; the point that I and others have made is that, by targeting the high-end, they misread the market and missed out on a massively bigger opportunity.

    Just to be clear, the ManageWP service itself is superb, absolutely superb, and getting better all the time. I participated in the beta and Vladimir very kindly lifted the usual limit to allow me to manage a very high number of sites, so, I can tell you from personal experience that, if you manage dozens or even hundreds of sites, ManageWP is an amazing experience.

    In fact, I would be one of their 2000 paying customers today, for at least some of my sites, but I was unable to get their payment system to accept any of my credit cards before the early-bird deadline – they were using Plimus and it is the only payment system that has ever refused to take money from me, bloody frustrating!

    Even if I was a paying customer, however, I would still say that their decision to change their pricing strategy represents one of the biggest missed opportunities in the WordPress world.

    Jeff, I don’t know if you still run guest articles but I would love to expand properly upon this subject at some point, because I think this whole story carries some important lessons.

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  17. @donnacha of WordSkill – Hello Donnacha,

    Pricing is always sensitive topic and very few companies get it correct right from the beginning, so I’ll allow for us to make that mistake too. Whether the prices are perceived as high-end or not, I can say that we do our best to deliver the high-end service. Since we launched, we developed a tons of new features, and the iOS app discussed here is just one. We don’t plan to stop there and so far we managed to have all these new features at no additional price to our customers, and I do not see that changing any time soon.

    I agree with one thing, Plimus is not the best payment processor around, and you are not the only one who had these problems. As hard as it may be, we are considering switching to a different processor.

    I’d really like to learn more about what you have to say, and if Jeff doesn’t, we’ll give you a spot on our blog. I am available if you want to run facts, costs and background about running our business.

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  20. I’ve posted 30 blogs since August 2010 and have received almost 10,000 comments which I am wading my way through.

    My problem is that I know very little about how to manage one site, never mind three.

    I want to secure ” at my elbow ” help to get the most out of WordPress.

    Can you tell me the best way to accomplish…Willing to pay.

    I thought I had my problem solved with well known Geek Squad. But, the appointment confirmation call blew me away when Geek asked me ” What type of program is WordPress ” ?

    Appointment cancelled.

    Richard Gore – White Plains –

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  22. @richard Gore – Hi Richard

    All beginnings are hard and we actually have a three part series on comments for WordPress on our blog

    http://managewp.com/wordpress-blog-comments
    http://managewp.com/wordpress-comments-plugins
    http://managewp.com/right-comments-system-maximize-blog-engagement

    ManageWP also features a Clean all spam comments feature, which will with a click of a button remove all spam comments on all your sites.

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  23. Jeffro reserves the last word here for a link to another post titled:

    Death to Freemium

    As one scrolls down the page to bring the article into view, it instantly jumps out that the page-header is locked on the screen. ‘eww. They framed it.’

    As a strong rule, the framing of page-elements is not well-regarded. Typically, we ascribe the use of frames to lack of experience, or as indicating a weak grasp of the sensibilities of site visitors. Business-wise, it’s a downer.

    “The Bakers’ Dozen” (13) is documented, going back centuries. Few would seriously question that such practices have been standard business technique, since the origin of business in the mists of prehistory. When a smart woodcutter sells a cord of firewood, the customer won’t quite get it to stack into 128 cubic feet.

    There are some subtleties & fine points to observe in this game, of course. The potential for foolishness with the gambit will trip-up a few, no doubt. Kinda like pasting a frame into every visitor’s screen.

    If SaneBox Blog will commit so elementary an error as to frame their header, where else might their judgement come up a tad clueless?

    If Mr. Prevolac and ManageWP are successful in defining the particular marketing approach that seems to be emerging in these discussions, they will unavoidably define a contrasting approach for someone else to exploit.

    Freemium & Premium have been making the world safe for each other, all along, and will undoubtedly continue to do so.

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  26. I love MWP functionally and the minor problems I’ve had have always received a prompt and help support response…

    The one and only HUGE gripe I have is with the pricing model. I have 35 sites to manage, i’d like to break that down to 5 business, 25 pro, 5 standard… But I wont pay business rates on 50 sites to accommodate this nor operate 3 accounts. So instead I work around it with a 25 site pro level subscription removing sites I don’t really NEED to manage. I’m finally this month going to up it to 50 and readd the 10 sites I’ve removed to make room for others… The whole thing is a PITA. Charge me for what I actually use, get rid of the tiers, allowing different service levels inside a single account, and offer a % based discount for hitting a certain number of sites.

    P.S. Jeffro, the capitization of this post title really bugs me.

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  27. @Jon Brown –
    I should just add in case it wasn’t clear. I think the pricing at each service tier is perfect, it’s just the use of tiers 5/10/25/50/100/500, and the inability to mix and match serivce levels in a single account that I hate. Hell, i could tolerate the tiers if I could mix and match in a single account.

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