EHERO Maintenance Mode – Maintenance mode and coming soon for WordPress

WordPress maintenance mode: close your site to the public without losing rankings or locking yourself out

The WordPress maintenance mode in EHERO Maintenance Mode closes your site to visitors while you keep working on it as usual. You switch it on with a toggle, it shows a light page that looks the way you want, and it gives Google the right signal: this is a short break, not a closure.

It sounds trivial until it goes wrong. The two accidents we see again and again: the plugin returns a 200 (or a 404) and the search engine decides your pages have changed or vanished, or someone gets locked out of the dashboard and has to log in over FTP to switch the plugin off by hand. This plugin is built around those two problems.

It is also free and complete: no Pro version, no locked features and no ads in the dashboard. The three modes, lockout protection, the templates, the countdown and email capture with export all come in the same download.

Proper SEO: the right status code for each case

It is the difference between a pause and a drop in rankings. Each mode answers with its own, deliberate HTTP code.

• Maintenance: HTTP 503 with a Retry-After header (3,600 seconds by default, adjustable from 60 seconds to a week), noindex and headers that stop any cache from storing the page.
• That is what Google recommends for planned downtime: its documentation on HTTP status codes explains that a 503 makes it come back later instead of dropping the URLs.
• Coming soon: HTTP 200, for a site under construction that does want to start getting known.
• Redirect: a temporary 302 to another URL, with loop protection if the target is your own site.
• Its own SEO title, meta description and social sharing image (Open Graph) for the maintenance page.

Lockout protection: you cannot lock yourself out of your own site

The reasonable fear of anyone who has ever had to use FTP to disable a plugin. It cannot happen here, because it does not depend on a checkbox.

• wp-login.php, the dashboard, cron, WP-CLI and REST and AJAX requests are never blocked, whatever you do with the settings.
• The normal site is shown to anyone with the capability you choose (administrator by default, or editor, author or any logged-in user) and to the roles you tick, such as shop manager.
• A secret link with a token lets a client see the site without an account: it sets a cookie for 1 to 90 days and you revoke it by regenerating the token.
• Allowed IPs, exact (IPv4 or IPv6) or as IPv4 CIDR ranges: the office and the VPN always get in.
• Excluded paths: keep the contact page, the legal notice or “My account” open while everything else is closed.

One-click design, or your own page

No wrestling with CSS, and no getting stuck in a template if you want something of your own.

• Eight preset palettes (EHERO, Dark, Crystal, Sunset, Forest, Coral, Graphite and Light minimal) that fill in the colours with one click.
• Four abstract backgrounds included, your own image from the media library or a gradient between two colours.
• A video background from YouTube (in privacy-enhanced mode) or MP4, muted and looped, with a dark overlay so the text stays readable.
• Or serve any WordPress page built with Bricks, Elementor or Gutenberg, while the plugin keeps the right status code.
• Logo, footer text, links to Facebook, Instagram, X and LinkedIn, plus your own CSS or head HTML, reserved for administrators.

Two light templates and a preview before you go live

The page does not load your theme unless you ask it to, so it opens fast even while the site is being rebuilt.

• Centred: the content over a colour, gradient, image or video background.
• Split: text on the left and a visual panel on the right; on mobile they stack.
• Both adapt to mobile screens and follow the palette you picked.
• The preview button opens the page as visitors will see it, even while the mode is off.
• If you like, a discreet login link on the page so your team can get in without hunting for the login URL.

A countdown that does something when it hits zero

Most plugins draw a pretty clock and stop there. This one can act on its own.

• A countdown to your launch date, calculated in the site time zone: every visitor sees the same end time, wherever they are.
• At zero: do nothing, switch the mode off automatically (the site opens by itself) or redirect to a URL.
• Scheduled start: switch the mode on in the afternoon and the lock only begins at the time you set.
• Together, the scheduled start and end cover a whole maintenance window without you having to be there.

Email capture: make the wait worth something

People who reach your site while it is closed are traffic you have already earned. At least get their email.

• A “notify me when it is ready” form with the button text and the thank-you message you want.
• Protection without captchas: a hidden trap field (honeypot) and a limit of 5 submissions every 10 minutes per IP.
• An optional GDPR consent checkbox, checked on the server, with a link to your privacy policy.
• The latest emails show up in the settings themselves, with a shortcut to the full list.

Your emails, in your database and wherever you need them

Contacts belong to your business, so they are stored in your WordPress first and then, if you want, in your email tool.

• A dedicated emails screen with search, date filters, 20 to 200 per page and CSV export using the same filter.
• Up to 2,000 emails are kept locally; beyond that, the most recent ones stay. You can also clear the list when the campaign is over.
• Optional integrations with Mailchimp (with double opt-in), Brevo and MailPoet. If the external service fails, the local copy is not lost.
• If EHERO Leads Manager is active, every email is also recorded there.
• When you uninstall the plugin, the captured emails are kept.

Details so you never forget WordPress maintenance mode is on

Small things that prevent big mistakes, like leaving the site closed for an entire Monday.

• A red “MAINTENANCE ACTIVE” badge in the admin bar, on every screen, linking to the settings.
• A warning in the settings while the mode is on, reminding you what visitors see.
• A Google Analytics 4 field just for the page, to measure how many people arrive while it is closed.
• A manual in English and Spanish inside the dashboard, covering setup, modes, design and frequently asked questions.
• Interface in eight languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Polish.

Built for WooCommerce stores too

Closing a store is more delicate than closing a corporate site: there are orders in progress, gateways reporting payments and customers who are logged in.

• The REST API stays open, so payment gateway notifications and integrations keep working during the downtime.
• Cron keeps running, so WooCommerce scheduled tasks do not pile up.
• With exclusions you keep open only what you need: “My account”, order tracking or a legal page.
• The shop manager can still see the site if you tick that role, without getting administrator rights.
• It does not need WooCommerce to work and, if you have it, it touches neither your theme nor its settings.

Ideal for

WordPress maintenance mode is needed more often than people think: anyone about to work on a live site needs it. Where it shows most:

📋 System requirements

Works on any current WordPress, with or without WooCommerce.

🛟 Technical support

It is a free plugin, but we wrote it and we answer: if you find a bug, write to soporte@consultoriaehero.com* and we will look into it. WordPress maintenance mode updates reach your dashboard automatically, like any other plugin.

⚖️ Comparison: why EHERO Maintenance Mode?

There are plenty of WordPress maintenance mode plugins. These are the differences that matter when the site is your business.

Data from 23-10-2026, taken from their WordPress.org listings and from SeedProd’s website and documentation. «Not stated»: we looked for it there and it is not there. Check their website before you decide.

Download it for free, switch it on and work in peace: your site is closed to the public, open to you and correct for Google.

Put your site into WordPress maintenance mode without losing rankings with EHERO Maintenance Mode.

Looking for more tools for your site? Browse all our WooCommerce plugins or visit the Consultoría EHERO store.

*EHERO Maintenance Mode is released under the GPL-2.0+ licence and provided “as is”, without warranty of any kind. We look into the bugs you report by email; this does not include consulting, custom configuration or bespoke development.