LightStart – Maintenance Mode, Coming Soon and Landing Page Builder

Add a maintenance page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance, add a coming soon page for a new website or create a landing page for an existing site. User with admin rights gets full access to the blog including the front end.

Activate the plugin and your blog is in maintenance-mode, works and only registered users with enough rights can see the front end. You can use a date with a countdown timer for visitor information or set a value and unit for information.

Also works with WordPress Multisite installs (each blog from the network has its own maintenance settings).

Features

• Fully customizable (change colors, texts and backgrounds).
• Subscription form (export emails to .csv file).
• Countdown timer (remaining time).
• Contact form (receive emails from visitors).
• Coming soon page;
• Landing page templates;
• WordPress multisite;
• Responsive design;
• Social media icons;
• Works with any WordPress theme;
• SEO options;
• Exclude URLs from maintenance;
• Bot functionality to collect the emails in a friendly and efficient way;
• GDPR Ready;

Bugs, technical hints or contribute

Please give us feedback, contribute and file technical bugs on GitHub Repo.

Credits

Developed by Themeisle

What’s Next

If you like this plugin, then consider checking out our other projects:

• Optimole – Optimole is your all-in-one image optimization solution for WordPress & beyond.
• WPShout – In-Depth WordPress Tutorials for Developers
• Revive Social – Revive Old Posts helps you keep your content alive and in front the audiences that matter.
• CodeinWP – CodeinWP stands for all-things-WordPress. From web design to freelancing and from development to business, your questions are covered.
• DomainWheel – Free Short Website name generator, with the help of AI, for instant ideas.

Check-out our blog to learn from our WordPress Reviews and see other WordPress plugins.

1. Unpack the download package
2. Upload all files to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory, include folders
3. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
4. Go to Settings page, where you can change what settings you need (pay attention to Exclude option!)

1. 

   Maintenance Mode Example

2. 

   Maintenance Mode Example #2

3. 

   Bot Example

4. 

   Dashboard General Settings

5. 

   Dashboard Design Settings

6. 

   Dashboard Modules Settings

7. 

   Dashboard Bot Settings

Version 2.6.20 (2025-09-04)

• Updated dependencies

Version 2.6.19 (2025-07-11)

• Improved onboarding wizard

Version 2.6.18 (2025-05-27)

• Updated dependencies

Version 2.6.17 (2025-04-16)

• Updated dependencies

Version 2.6.16 (2025-01-10)

• Fixed compatibility issue with WordPress 6.7
• Fixed broken onboarding layout

Version 2.6.15 (2024-12-04)

• Codebase changes.

Version 2.6.14 (2024-11-11)

• Fixed conflict with WPForms
• Updated dependencies

Version 2.6.13 (2024-10-14)

• Codebase updates.

Version 2.6.12 (2024-09-17)

Bug Fixes

• Compatibility with Elementor: Fixes a compatibility issue with Elementor.
• Fixes Checkbox Styles: Fixes a styling issue with Checkbox in the wizard that makes it almost invisible on screen.

Version 2.6.11 (2024-04-18)

Improvements

​- Updated internal dependencies:​​ Enhanced performance and security.

Version 2.6.10 (2024-02-28)

Fixes

• Updated dependencies

Version 2.6.9 (2023-12-22)

Bug Fixes

• Fixed compatibility issue with WP 6.4
• Fixed broken templates layout issue on the Safari browser
• Enhanced security
• Fixed compatibility issue with WP-Optimize

Version 2.6.8 (2023-06-07)

• Fix the Save button Module tab not working
• Codebase updates

Version 2.6.7 (2023-04-01)

• Bug fix: Addressed an unnecessary ‘no maintenance page’ error occurrence.

Version 2.6.6 (2023-03-31)

• Remove error notice for users that use an overriding custom template
• Update dependencies

Version 2.6.5 (2023-03-01)

Update dependencies

Version 2.6.4 (2023-02-24)

• Add the option to manage maintenance status on all sites from the network dashboard
• Update dependencies

Version 2.6.3 (2023-02-06)

• Update dependencies

Version 2.6.2 (2022-12-16)

• Add the option in the wizard to skip importing a template and installing Otter
• Improve the quality of the template screenshots
• Fix the template overriding issue

Version 2.6.1 (2022-11-03)

• Add a notice to announce the rebrand of the plugin

Version 2.6.0 (2022-11-02)

• Adds Landing pages templates
• Adds more Coming soon and Maintenance mode templates
• Rebrand the plugin into LightStart

Version 2.5.4 (2022-10-10)

• Fix subscribers entry export for legacy forms.
• Fix PHP notice showing up on edge cases new installs.

Version 2.5.3 (2022-09-28)

• Fix wrong template loaded when the current post template is empty.

Version 2.5.2 (2022-09-27)

• Fix maintenance mode issue for previously logged users #321
• Allow comments into exclude textarea so that you can comment on the IP addresses for location, props @joostdekeijzer
• Fix PHP notice errors on specific scenarios #324
• Fix Otter for saving subscriber entry

Version 2.5.1 (2022-09-08)

• Fixes a bug which was causing error on some instances

Version 2.5.0 (2022-09-08)

• New Feature: Adds compatibility with Block Editor or any page builder for building the maintenance mode page.
• New Feature: Adds coming soon and maintenance mode starting templates.

Version 2.4.7 (2022-08-08)

Fixes

• Fix login form display
• Fix email collecting by the bot
• Improve accessibility of the maintenance page thanks to @SophieWeb

Version 2.4.6 (2022-06-15)

• Improve data sanitizations for custom css and contact module

Version 2.4.5 (2022-06-15)

• Harden security and improve release process

Version 2.4.4 (2022-02-10)

Update dependencies

Version 2.4.3 (2022-01-27)

• Change ownership to Themeisle

2.4.2 (18/01/2022)

• Misc: 900 000 Active Installs Celebrations!
• Misc: WordPress 5.9 compatibility
• Fix: jQuery UI CSS theme reference from jQuery CDN
• Misc: Text fixes in the dashboard

2.4.1 (20/07/2021)

• Misc: WordPress 5.8 compatibility

2.4.0 (13/05/2021)

• Design: add “Custom CSS” setting; Finally! 🙂
• Design: add “Footer links” color setting
• Design: add a list of available shortcodes under the “Text” editor
• Bot: make {visitor_name} placeholder work in all messages after the visitor types his name
• Misc: add [embed] shortcode for responsive video embeds; Compatible with YouTube, Vimeo, DailyMotion.
• Misc: make the exclude mechanism work with Cyrillic characters
• Misc: add wpmm_maintenance_template filter; It works the same way as the wpmm_contact_template filter, but for the maintenance template.
• Misc: now you can override the contact email template too; Check /views/contact.php for more details.
• Misc: better compatibility with translation plugins like Loco Translate
• Misc: the image uploaders (from the dashboard) are now translatable
• Misc: improve uninstall routine
• Misc: add wpmm_delete_cache action; It is called after each setting change.
• Misc: add support for cache plugins like WP Rocket, WP Fastest Cache, Endurance Page Cache, Swift Performance Lite, Cache Enabler, SG Optimizer, LiteSpeed Cache, Nginx Helper;
• Misc: remove wpmm_count_where helper function
• Misc: code improvements

2.3.0 (07/12/2020)

• Modules: add support for Google Analytics 4 measurement ID
• Design: enable media buttons on wp_editor (now you can add images from the editor)
• Bot: fix translation issue
• Misc: add filters for capabilities wpmm_settings_capability, wpmm_subscribers_capability, and wpmm_all_actions_capability (the last one can be used to override all capabilities)
• Misc: fix [loginform] shortcode redirect attribute
• Misc: a few CSS & Javascript improvements
• Misc: bump “Tested up to” version to 5.6

2.2.4 (20/05/2019)

• bump “Tested up to” to 5.2.0
• fix typo in Italian translation (it_IT)
• Bot: add a note about how you can export the list of subscribers #195
• Bot: add client-side sanitization to the input fields #176

2.2.3 (20/02/2019)

• bump “Tested up to” version to 5.1.0
• replace “wpmu_new_blog” action with “wp_initialize_site” action for WP 5.1.0 users because the first one is deprecated in the new version
• small improvement to “check_exclude” method from “WP_Maintenance_Mode” class

2.2.2 (27/11/2018)

• Google Analytics module: migrate from analytics.js to gtag.js + add ip anonymization #178
• GDPR module: accept links inside texareas + add policy link target #188
• add charset meta tag #200
• fix PHP Notice: Undefined index: HTTP_USER_AGENT
• add plural and single form translation for subscribers number (settings page)

Earlier versions

For the changelog of earlier versions, please refer to the full changelog.