Super awesome, and surprisingly free

WP Remote is deceptively simple. I started using it when it was new, and I thought I’d use it for simple sites on their free plan. Their pricing structure didn’t make sense to me, and I figured I’d switch to one of the other seemingly “more robust” hosted or self-hosted alternatives. I’ve tried most of the alternatives, and the fact is they are way too “robust.”

Most of the time you just want to know what has or hasn’t been updated, and to run updates — and that’s it. Everything else is done better through WordPress itself and/or your high quality managed WordPress host. This is what WP Remote does — monitor and run updates — from a persistent browser tab you should keep pinned down and check frequently when work and email bores you. (WP Remote can also drop you some backups too — and very nicely — but this isn’t something I’ve really needed to use.)

The whole shebang is FREE now, perhaps pending the hot new version that was heralded 8 months ago as just about ready for a beta release. No word on that yet, but I trust when it appears it will still be brutally simple, brutally efficient, and brutally awesome.