One of the best features of WordPress is the flexibility to edit your blog or website content and designs when you want. But, when it comes to professionalism, people who visit your blog regularly, or even, for the first time, should understand that you’re working on something.
It’s better to use a good and professional WordPress maintenance mode plugin. However, not all of these tools will be as useful as you expect, especially the free ones. But, the good news is that you can try the below plugins one by one, to find the best one that suits the needs of your site.
Top maintenance mode, and under-construction plugins
1. SeedProd
This is the number one WordPress maintenance mode plugin. It’s also a great tool for the coming soon mode. It’s a premium quality tool that comes with all the tools and features that every professional webmaster needs.
The plugin was built on HTML5 and CSS3, which means the latest coding languages and technologies to get a professional design and well-organized page elements.
This amazing plugin works with all the major email marketing services, and it supports the following ones:
- Aweber
- Mailchimp
- Mad Mimi
- iContact
- InfusionSoft
- Constant Contact
- Campaign Monitor
- Get Response
- Mail Poet,
And even, gravity forms, if you want to use your custom subscription opt-in boxes. Of course, you can use your own HTML web form or any other way to get subscribers.
SeedProd offers exclusive and powerful designs that no other plugins offer. It works with both, regular, and multi WordPress sites, the translation is ready, and the plugin works with any WordPress theme without exception.
Unlike many other tools for the “Under Construction” sites that work only with Genesis, or specific theme frameworks, this one integrates with all themes. When it comes to SEO, this is the only search engine-optimized plugin that creates the pages that Google and Bing’s crawlers understand and follow.
The best part of this plugin is the beautiful and eye-catching countdown timer that will not only look professional but also, responsive.
The maintenance mode pages will be fully mobile-optimized, and you can customize everything, from colors and content to layouts and options. They’ve added an amazing new feature to add a background video to your landing page.
At the same time, you have the social follow, and sharing buttons to use. Whenever you have a maintenance process, enable your maintenance mode, and let people know what you’re doing professionally.
Readers can subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media profiles, share your website, and more when they’re on your maintenance page. All that is only a few features of the long list of functions that the plugin has.
To find what you can do with this plug as maintenance, coming soon, landing pages, and contest pages, visit their showcase page.
2. WordPress Maintenance Mode
This is not a plugin with all the features and functions that you expect. It’s free, but it can help when you look for something good, functional, and, best of all, free. You can use this plugin to tell your site visitors that your website is in maintenance mode.
So, they understand to come back later and access your site’s content. This tool comes with customization options like the colors, the background, the messages, and much more.
3. Easy Pie Maintenance Mode
This is a simple-to-use plugin without any configuration or settings. All you have to do is to install and activate it, then, add your own logo, and simple text for your visitors. The background can be set to a color or an image, that you need to upload.
This is a free plugin without advanced options, but, it’s recommended for people who just look for a simple coming soon or maintenance landing page, for a small blog or website.
4. WP Maintenance Mode
You can use this plugin after installing it, it works like the above ones. It lets you create a coming soon or an under-construction page, and of course, you can use it when you need maintenance for your website.
It comes with responsive mode, and it supports any popular email marketing service to let people subscribe to your newsletter, directly from your landing pages. The plugin offers a countdown timer and other useful options, and even, social network icons.
5. Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode
This is a very simple plugin that comes with the minimum options, but it will help save the loading time, especially for slow blogs. The control panel comes with options to customize your text, and even, to add some social media buttons. You can add your own background image, but make sure that you optimize your image before using it.
It’s recommended to compress the photo that you want to use so that it loads fast and will not affect the loading time.
Tips to create a professional maintenance mode page
The above plugins work well with WordPress, however, you need to make sure that you add the right photos or text. Remember that the main goal is to notify readers that the site is under maintenance and will be back soon.
Make things professional and use good quality images after compressing them, to speed up the loading time, and create a fast landing page.
For social media buttons, they can easily boost your number of followers, and even, the number of shares. But, use it with moderation, every social icon adds an extra request to your server, and it’s not recommended to use lots of icons everywhere on your page. The icons for Facebook and Twitter will be good.
The same thing for the page content. You need to use the minimum text and focus on your email list or subscribers.
The countdown is a highly recommended element to use on your page. Make it well-designed, and it will help to keep visitors for extra time. Best of all, you need to use your email subscription boxes, and let people subscribe to your email list even if the site is under maintenance or construction.
The most important thing is to clear your cache when you want to come back to the live website. Some caching plugins can save the landing page options for some hours. So, make sure to delete the site’s cache, especially, if you’re using the W3 Total cache plugin.
