Docs · Guides
Many WordPress sites, one dashboard
One agent per server. Auto-discover from Nginx or Apache. Site-pack pricing instead of logging into forty wp-admins.
You do not need another plugin login to know whether last night’s backups ran.
That is the quiet tax of a growing WordPress list. Five sites is annoying. Forty is a second job. Each install has its own plugin, its own schedule, its own “did that job finish?” question. Miss one failed cron and you find out on the morning the site is already down.
This page is about putting that work in one place — a dashboard you host, agents on the servers that already run the sites, and a site pack instead of another fee for every wp-admin. It is not about WordPress Multisite. Separate installs on one VPS, or across a fleet, are the normal case.
If you only have one brochure site on shared hosting with no SSH, stay on a plugin. The longer “when to stay” argument is in plugin backups vs server-level backups and Coming from UpdraftPlus, BlogVault, or BackupBuddy.
What “many sites” actually feels like
Most people do not wake up wanting a backup platform. They wake up tired of the same loop.
You open client A’s wp-admin to check Updraft. You open client B for BlogVault or Jetpack. You skim email digests that all look fine until one is not. A new site means another plugin, another license line, another place to miss a red status. When restore day comes, you hope WordPress still boots — because that is where the restore button lives. Restore when wp-admin is dead is that morning.
Fleet tools help with updates and monitoring. They do not always fix the backup story. Some bolt a plugin or a vault onto each site. Some leave backup as “bring your own.” The question this guide answers is narrower: can one control plane see the sites, run the jobs, and restore without opening forty dashboards?
One dashboard, one agent per server
Reaver Backup’s shape is simple on purpose.
You install the dashboard once on a Linux box you control. On each web server you protect, you pair a small agent. The agent polls the dashboard — nothing inbound on the agent — and looks for WordPress the way Nginx or Apache already does: sites-enabled, server_name, root, then wp-config.php for the database. Custom paths count too. They use the same schedules and the same site quota as discovered WordPress installs.
From there the loop looks like a plugin, just not inside WordPress. Sites show up. You pick storage. You run one backup so you know it works. You set schedules. Status and mail live in that one UI. Restore lives there too — on the same server when WordPress is a white screen, or onto a new host when the box itself is gone (restore onto a new host).
Agents are unlimited. What your plan limits is sites: managed restic repositories, WordPress or custom path. That is the pack model. The click path for the first one is First backup. Agent pairing and discovery live under Agents & sites.
How this differs from “a plugin on every site”
| Plugin on every site | Managed vault per site | Reaver Backup | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where you look each morning | Many wp-admins (or many vendor tabs) | Vendor dashboard + per-site billing | One dashboard you host |
| What you install | A plugin on each WordPress | Helper / service per site | One agent per server |
| Who holds the files | Destinations you connect, or the vendor | Often the vendor’s vault | Destinations you connect — local, S3, B2, SSH. Not a Reaver vault |
| Pricing shape | Often grows per site | Often grows per site | Yearly site packs (5, 40, 100, 250…) |
| Restore if wp-admin is dead | Usually painful | Often part of what you buy | From the Reaver dashboard onto the docroot |
You can leave the old plugin installed while you stand Reaver Backup up. Two layers on the way in is not a mess. History in Reaver starts when the first snapshot lands in a repo you own — it does not import last week’s Updraft zip.
Who this is for
This guide is for people who already SSH into boxes, or can.
Freelancers and agencies with client fleets on VPS or dedicated hosts. Homelab operators with more than one WordPress tree on a machine. Anyone who is done asking forty installs whether last night’s job ran.
Stay on per-site plugins when you cannot put an agent on the server. Shared hosting with only wp-admin is still plugin territory. Stay on a managed vault when “a company keeps the files and can restore without me touching a server” is the actual requirement — that is a different product, and Reaver Backup will feel like a step backward if that is what you want.
MainWP, ManageWP, and UpdraftCentral solve adjacent problems (updates, monitoring, a central view). If backup is already solid there and you like that stack, keep it. Reaver Backup is for when the backup control plane itself is what you want on infrastructure you run, with storage you named.
Cost without fake spreadsheets
Plugin and vault bills usually grow by site. Reaver Backup bills a yearly site pack. Free is one site on local storage. Solo is $24.99 a year for one site with offsite. Starter is 5 sites. Pro is 40. Agency is 100. Scale is 250. Exact rows and what “unlimited offsite” means live on Pricing.
Do not compare Free local-only to a hosted vault and call that a win. Local is how you prove the pipeline on one site. Offsite is how you cover a dead disk or a dead host. The storage bill for S3 or B2 is yours — Reaver Backup does not meter your site files as a vault fee.
At full capacity the paid packs land around $0.20–$1.65 per site per month depending on tier. Lower site counts raise the effective rate. That is the honest math; competitor prices change, so check theirs when you compare.
A normal week with a fleet
Monday is not forty logins. It is one status board (and mail, if you turned reports on). A new client site on a server you already agent: wait for discovery, or add a custom path if it is not WordPress. A new server: pair an agent, wait for the scan, set destinations and schedules. A white screen on a living box: restore from the dashboard onto that agent’s path — details here. A dead VM: new agent, attach the destination that still holds the snapshots, restore, then vhost, TLS, and DNS by hand.
That is the whole pitch without a feature parade. Discover. Schedule. Restore. One UI. Your storage.
Short answers
How do I back up all my client WordPress sites from one place? Put a dashboard you control in front of agents on each web server. Auto-discover the installs (or add paths), set schedules once, and watch status in one UI. That is what Reaver Backup is built for.
Is this WordPress Multisite? No. Multisite is one WordPress network. This guide is many separate installs — on one host or many — under one backup dashboard.
Do I need a plugin on every site? No. Reaver Backup does not run as a WordPress plugin. The agent runs on the server.
How many agents do I need? One per server you protect. Agents are unlimited on the plans; site packs limit managed repos.
What about UpdraftCentral or MainWP? Use them if they already solve your week. Choose Reaver Backup when you want the backup control plane itself self-hosted, with restic snapshots on storage you configure, and restore that does not depend on wp-admin.
Can I mix WordPress and non-WordPress paths? Yes. Custom paths count toward the same site limit. WordPress is the happy path, not the only workload.
Start with one server
You do not need the whole fleet on day one. Install the dashboard, pair one agent, take a snapshot you can restore, then add the next host. Free covers one site on local storage. Site packs are on Pricing when the list grows.
The walkthrough is First backup. Agent install and discovery are in Agents & sites.