Free Maintenance Mode and Coming Soon Plugins for WordPress

While preparing your website for launch or making necessary changes for a relaunch, you don’t have to give site visitors a front-row seat for that awkward in-between phase. In this article, we’ll share a list and give an overview of the best free maintenance mode and coming soon plugins for WordPress.

Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode

Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode is a user-friendly WordPress maintenance mode plugin that lets you display a background image, logo, header, content and a MailChimp subscription form. Alternatively, you can create a landing page from scratch with custom HTML.

Dozens of options are split into seven categories: Basic, SEO, themes, design, email, form and advanced. The support tab links to the plugin support room on WordPress.org. From the settings area, you can customize every aspect of your landing page.

Two themes are included in the free version. A further 40 themes are available if you upgrade to the pro version of the plugin, which retails at a one-off fee of $79 for a single license (or $6.99 a month). Sixty more themes are there if you upgrade to the agency license at $199.

Upgrading also unlocks all pro features that are restricted in the free version. This includes IP whitelisting, double opt-in subscription forms, a form name field, and HTTPS enforcement. Additional content is also available for your landing page: Video, countdown, progress bar, social icons, and map.

Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode is easy to recommend as it’s free to download, simple to use and has many great options — such as using your own custom HTML. The theme selection is low, but the plugin allows you to change the background image, header, and content. The pro version unlocks many great designs and a host of additional features. It’s worth checking out if you have the budget for it.

Maintenance

One of the simplest maintenance mode plugins on WordPress.org, Maintenance is active on more than 400,000 WordPress websites and lets you customize your landing page through one settings page.

You can upload a background image and a logo, and assign your own colors. Beyond that, you’ll need to customize the main content area yourself within the WordPress visual editor, which does open up possibilities such as embedding images and videos. The plugin also has a front-end login form, as well as support for Google Analytics. It also lets you exclude specific posts and pages from being placed in maintenance mode.

WP Maintenance Mode

Active on more than 600,000 websites, WP Maintenance Mode is an interesting WordPress maintenance mode plugin that’s 100% free to use. It gives you full control over who can see your admin area and the front end of your website.

There’s support for Google Analytics, and the main content area can be edited using the WordPress visual editor. In addition to changing the background, you can also display a countdown timer, subscription form, social media profiles, and a contact form. WP Maintenance Mode has a built-in bot that asks visitors a series of questions that you define. The goal of the bot is to capture visitors’ email addresses. All email addresses that are entered can be exported in CSV format.

The plugin is also GDPR compliant. There’s an option to link to a privacy policy page in the footer, and you can add your GDPR information to the contact form too. WP Maintenance Mode is a great plugin for coming soon pages and maintenance modes.

From a design point of view, it’s a little restrictive as you have no control over where content such as the countdown timer and social media icons are displayed on your landing page. Despite this, it’s easy to recommend WP Maintenance Mode as it offers so many useful features free of charge.

Under Construction

Developed by the same people behind Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode, Under Construction is a good looking WordPress maintenance mode plugin that comes with two simple landing page designs. It’s active on more than 300,000 websites.

The main content area can be modified using the WordPress visual editor, and you can also enable a login button, social media icons, and a custom footer. A lot of useful features are available in the settings area. You can define an automatic end time for your maintenance message, and you can whitelist specific WordPress user roles so they always see your full website.

A single license for Under Construction Pro retails at $69. It offers MailChimp integration, and affiliates module, and more than a hundred additional landing page designs that look great. The agency license costs $250 and offers all pro features, 60 additional landing page designs, advanced drag-and-drop builder modules, and Zapier integration. Both licenses are for a one-off fee, so you don’t have to worry about yearly renewals.

The developers of Under Construction have limited the number of themes available in the free version — just like they did in their Minimal Coming Soon & Maintenance Mode plugin. I don’t believe this will be a deal-breaker, as the two included designs are good and let you customize your message. You can, of course, upgrade to Under Construction Pro to unlock all features and landing page designs.

CMP — Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin

CMP — Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin is a highly customizable coming soon and maintenance mode plugin for WordPress that lets you display a landing page for your whole website, your homepage or only to those who have been blacklisted. A redirection mode is also available.

The plugin lets you adjust your logo, content, background, countdown timer, subscription form, social media icons, and footer copyright. Each element has many options — for example, for your background you can apply an image, video, graphical pattern, gradient and more.

It is possible to customize colors and fonts too, and there’s an option to add custom CSS. In addition to Google Analytics support, you can also define your SEO settings for your landing page, which is a nice addition that’s not usually provided. Three themes come packaged with CMP, and a further 16 themes are available on the developer’s website. Two of these are free to download and the rest are at $10 each.

CMP — Coming Soon & Maintenance Plugin is one of the best maintenance mode solutions available to WordPress users. There are many design options, and the additionally available themes are not only gorgeous but fairly priced too.

Coming Soon Booster

Coming Soon Booster is a stylish WordPress plugin that comes with one free design. Thankfully, the included theme looks great, with the design integrating a contact form and newsletter subscription pop-up. Every aspect of your page can change. From the colors to the timer and forms. While animations can appear throughout the background too.

At first glance, you may get the impression that the free version of Coming Soon Booster has some limits due to the abundance of pro labels on options. While many features are not there, the free version has everything you need to produce a stylish coming soon page or maintenance page.

Coming Soon Viral Page by Growtheme

Coming Soon Viral Page by Growtheme is a versatile coming soon and maintenance mode solution that’s 100% free to use. It has support for five email marketing services for your newsletter form. Alternatively, you can use your own custom HTML for your newsletter.

From a design aspect, it’s quite basic. You can change the logo, background, and colors, however, you can only use text for your main content area. As the WordPress visual editor isn’t there.

Moreover, you can have a confirmation page if you use a double opt-in to capture email addresses. You can define a thank-you page too. If a visitor doesn’t enter their email address, you can display a pop-up with your newsletter sign-up box when they exit your website. This is quite an aggressive marketing technique, but it could help to increase email sign-ups. I’m also happy to see the plugin lets you export and import options. Which is useful if you’re transferring settings to another website. Easy to use and free to download. As a result, Viral Page by Growtheme is one to check out for a simple solution with good newsletter support.

IgniteUp

Most free coming soon and maintenance mode plugins come with either one or two landing page designs. Or require you to create your page from scratch. IgniteUp bucks this trend by offering four quality themes, while five additional designs are available from between $3.99 and $5.99 each.

IgniteUp lets you allow specific WordPress user roles to bypass your maintenance mode and access your full website. You can do this via IP whitelisting too, or give access using a special URL. As with Coming Soon Viral Page by Growtheme, you can customize colors and your logo and background. However, you can’t add rich media so easily, as the WordPress visual editor isn’t available, so only text can appear.

In addition, save new subscribers via a subscription form on your WordPress database, MailChimp or MailPoet. You can also display social media icons and a contact form. While there’s no premium version of IgniteUp, additional features such as animation effects. Video backgrounds and location maps can appear by purchasing one of the premium themes.

It may not be the most advanced solution, but there’s a lot to love about IgniteUp with its gorgeous themes. Affordable theme upgrades, and useful newsletter subscription options. I recommend checking it out.

Honorable Mentions

There are dozens of coming soon and maintenance mode plugins on WordPress.org. In addition, a few that just no appar from our original list of more than 40 WordPress plugins.

With over 900,000 installations, Coming Soon Page & Maintenance Mode is by far the most popular coming soon and maintenance mode WordPress plugin on the market. While it’s easy to use. It lacks many of the advanced filtering and design features found in other maintenance mode plugins.

Finally, there are no themes in the free version either, so you need to create everything from scratch. However, the pro version, which is available from $29.60 a year, unlocks all features, including a real-time page builder, email captures, contact forms, social media integration and more.