This article explains how our new integration settings area gives web hosts optionality to control their own technology stack. Select your own APIs, control costs across your fleet.
Note: This is still in progress and we will continue to expand your optionality to align our modules with various API providers.
The default nobody voted for
Most WordPress care platforms already made the integration decision for you. WP Remote routes security through MalCare (we actually think this is the best alternative on the market and we love MalCare). WP Umbrella has Patchstack built-in security. The vendors are baked in. You don’t pick it, you don’t price it, and you can’t swap it. Every site you manage carries a third-party cost you never chose, marked up and bundled into a plan you don’t control.
For a host, that isn’t a feature. It’s a tax on WP Care operations.
Defaults are a business model, not a convenience
There’s a reason these platforms hard-wire a single security vendor. The platform has the reseller deal or owns its own technology, so the platform picks the vendor, and the cost flows through to you with their margin stacked on top. You inherit a vendor relationship you never negotiated, on terms you can’t see, at a price you can’t move. If that vendor raises rates, changes scope, or has an outage, you will eventually absorb it. The “default” is doing exactly what it was designed to do: lock the economics in their favor.
WP Maintain takes the opposite position. Every integration is a slot you control, not a default you accept. Of course, we also have built-in options for convenience if you don’t want to even think about it.
The model: a provider slot in every lane
Every category in WP Maintain is configurable. For each one, you choose how it runs:
- Use our first-party
mainservice. One bill, predictable cost, nothing to negotiate. Standardize your whole portfolio on it. - Bring your own key. Already have a preferred stack? Plug in your own APIs. You own the vendor relationship and the pricing you already negotiated.
No other platform gives you this flexibility. That’s the entire difference: WP Maintain never forces a third-party vendor onto your customers, and never forces its own first-party service either. You decide, category by category.
The integration map we are targeting
We are working on building our our integration settings. If you are an agency or a web hosts, please contact us if we are missing any that you would want. If you are an API provider and want to be included, please contact us for integration partnership.
| Category | First-party main option | Bring-your-own / third-party | What you control |
|---|---|---|---|
| Security | mainGate | MalCare, Patchstack, BitNinja, Imunify Connect, WP Scan, Wordfence, and others | Malware API, Vulnerability API, Virtual Patching API for security scans, patches, and malware removal |
| Performance | mainStreet | Jetpack, Airlift, WP Rocket, NitroPack, Google PageSpeed Insights; CDN via Cloudflare, BunnyCDN, others | Performance stack , caching and CDN |
| SEO | mainRank | marketgoo, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Google Analytics, others | Reporting source and SEO tooling |
| Monitor | mainWatch | Uptime Robot, Oh Dear, others | Who watches, how often, where alerts go |
| Backup | mainSave | BlogVault, Backblaze, Google Drive, Dropbox, others | Backup provider and storage destination |
| AI Chat | mAIn Chat | OpenAI, Claude, Gemini | Model behind site chat insights and chat-to-staging, or your own key |
Why this matters for hosts
You control the cost curve. When the security vendor is a slot instead of a default, you decide whether to run mainGate at a known internal cost or bring a rate you’ve already negotiated. Either way, nobody is stacking a hidden reseller margin on top of every site you manage.
You keep your vendor relationships. Bring-your-own-key means the contracts you already hold stay yours. WP Maintain doesn’t insert itself between you and other vendors it’s integrating with. It orchestrates them.
You can standardize for margin. When you do want simplicity, the main family gives you one predictable cost per lane across your whole portfolio, so your care offer has clean, defensible economics instead of a pass-through bill you can’t forecast.
Your agencies trust it. Agencies have learned to distrust platforms that quietly bundle vendors, because they’ve been burned by exactly that. A care platform that lets them see and choose every integration is one they’ll actually adopt across a multi-host portfolio.
A primary example of this. WP Umbrella (another alternative WP Care platform) charges 2€/site/month for Patchstack add-on and 2,49€/site/month for Hourly Backups add-on. If you go to Patchstack or a provider like Backblaze directly as an agency or host, you will be able to negotiate your own per-site pricing, volume discounts, or strategic partnership to control your own per-site pricing without the middle man.
The takeaway
Every other platform makes the integration decision for you and prices it for you. WP Maintain makes you the decision-maker in every lane: first-party when you want simplicity or bring-your-own when you want your rate. That’s not a longer settings menu. It’s the difference between renting someone else’s vendor economics and owning your own.
