Manage plugins across your sites

The Automattic for Agencies plugin manager gives you a single view of all plugins installed across your connected client sites. From here, you can update, activate, deactivate, enable auto-updates, and install plugins across multiple sites without logging into each one individually.

In this guide, you will learn how to view, update, activate, deactivate, manage auto-updates, install, and remove plugins across your connected sites.

To view all plugins installed across your connected sites, go to Plugins in the sidebar of your Automattic for Agencies portal, or visit Plugins → Manage.

The Manage plugins page lists every plugin installed across your connected sites, along with the number of sites each plugin is installed on.

To view the sites a specific plugin is installed on, click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column. This opens a detailed view showing each site the plugin is installed on, with columns for Active, Autoupdate, and Update status.

Automattic for Agencies provides two different plugin update options. You can update a plugin on a single site or you can update a single plugin on all sites where it is installed.

To update a plugin on a specific site:

1. Click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column to open the site detail view.
2. In the Update column, click the Update button next to the site you want to update.

To update plugins in bulk across multiple sites:

1. On the Manage plugins page, identify the row for the plugin you wish to update
2. In the update available column, click “Update to version x.x”.

Automattic for Agencies provides different plugin activation and deactivation options. You can toggle the state of a plugin on a single site, you can toggle the state of a single plugin on all sites where it is installed, and you can toggle the state of multiple plugins across all sites on which they are installed.

To activate or deactivate a single plugin on a specific site:

1. Click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column to open the site detail view.
2. Toggle the Active switch on or off for the relevant site.

To activate or deactivate a single plugin across multiple sites:

1. On the Manage plugins page open the action menu for the specific plugin you want to activate or deactivate
2. Choose the Activate or Deactivate option
3. This will change the activation status of this specific plugin on all sites on which it is installed

To activate or deactivate multiple plugins across all sites on which they are installed:

1. On the Manage plugins page, select the checkboxes next to the plugins you want to update.
2. In the bulk actions bar at the bottom of the page, click Activate or Deactivate.
3. This will change the activation status of all plugins selected across all sites on which they are installed.

Automattic for Agencies provides two different options for enabling and disabling auto-updates. You can enable or disable auto-updates on a single site or you can enable and disable autoupdates for multiple plugins across all sites on which they are installed.

To enable or disable auto-updates for a plugin on a specific site:

1. Click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column to open the site detail view.
2. Toggle the Autoupdate switch on or off for the relevant site.

To enable or disable auto-updates in bulk:

1. On the Manage plugins page, select the checkboxes next to the relevant plugins.
2. In the bulk actions bar at the bottom of the page, click Enable auto-updates or Disable auto-updates.This will apply that setting across all selected sites, regardless of their current setting.

📌 Reminder: Sites showing “Auto-managed on this site” are hosted on WordPress.com. Auto-update settings are managed automatically on these sites and cannot be changed from the plugin manager.

When viewing the site detail for a plugin, an Available on section lists your other connected sites where the plugin is not yet installed. These are sites where Jetpack is active.

To install a plugin on an additional site:

1. Click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column to open the site detail view.
2. Scroll to the Available on section.
3. Click the Install button next to the site you want to install the plugin on.

To remove a plugin from all sites:

1. On the Manage plugins page, click the ⋮ icon next to the plugin you want to remove.
2. Click Remove.

3. Confirm the action when prompted.

To remove a plugin from a specific site:

1. Click the plugin name or the number in the Sites column to open the site detail view.
2. Click the ⋮ icon next to the site you want to remove the plugin from.
3. Click Remove.

4. Confirm the action when prompted.