How Undefined Cut Its Maintenance Work in Half with WP Umbrella

Nicolas Riviere started Undefined to do one thing well: build custom WordPress websites. From his small studio just outside Paris, he and his trusted team of freelancers help clients create clean website designs and careful development. 

However, as they onboarded more clients, the long, unglamorous work of maintaining those sites kept growing. Every update, every security check, and every backup took more time. 

Even with only a couple dozen sites under maintenance, Undefined was losing hours every week to manual tasks, and they had no effective way to demonstrate to clients what they were doing.

Company Snapshot

Metrics That Matter 

Too Many Sites. Too Little Time

Before WP Umbrella, keeping everything up to date was mostly manual. Every new plugin version was managed through Git, then manually updated and deployed to each client site. Uptime checks were even more hit-or-miss; they’d catch a downtime issue only if someone happened to look at the site that day.

And the security aspect was stressful, too. There was no centralized way to know if a plugin had a known vulnerability or if one of the sites went offline overnight. On top of that, none of this work was visible to clients, so explaining why maintenance mattered felt like trying to sell an invisible product.

When you’re balancing client work, design revisions, and new projects, losing hours to routine updates doesn’t make sense. Nicolas knew the process had to change if they wanted to scale.

Before WP Umbrella, we only offered minimal maintenance—even though we had already built many websites. We handled fewer than five sites per month, all manually. That process didn’t scale.

Finding WP Umbrella

That’s when Nicolas found WP Umbrella through a post by its founder on LinkedIn. Other agencies were already using it, and the platform felt like a good fit, especially because it was built for teams that needed a simple way to stay on top of updates, security, and backups without adding more people.

The setup took minutes. Right away, the team could monitor all their client sites from a single dashboard. Uptime checks and security alerts ran in the background. It was all automatic.

More importantly, WP Umbrella’s maintenance reports gave Undefined a way to show clients what was going on under the hood. Every month, they’d send a short report with updates, backups, and uptime stats. 

Time Saved and Clients Kept Happy

WP Umbrella cut the manual work by at least 50%. What used to take 5-6 hours a week was down to about 2, and most of that was just glancing at the dashboard to ensure everything was green.

WP Umbrella took care of the repetitive stuff, flagged any errors as they happened, and sent clear alerts so nothing went unnoticed. That extra time the team was able to save with WP Umbrella went straight back into client work. 

It also took the stress off. They weren’t constantly checking updates or waiting for something to fail without knowing.

The automatic monitoring and uptime tracking have significantly reduced our mental load. Now, we can focus on site creation and development without constantly worrying about undetected issues or site outages.

And because Undefined could send white-label reports with their branding every month, clients finally had a clear picture of what they were paying for. The reports made their maintenance work visible to clients. It wasn’t just a vague promise to “keep the site up to date.” It was right there in the client’s inbox: updates completed, uptime tracked, vulnerabilities detected, and more.

Reports help us clearly demonstrate our work and reassure clients that their site is healthy. It’s a win for transparency and client retention.

Building Stronger Client Relationships

Clients appreciate transparency. Getting a concise, clear summary each month takes all the mystery out of maintenance. It also sets expectations properly. Instead of wondering if they need to pay for ongoing support, they can see what’s being done. That makes renewal discussions easier, especially with newer clients.

And internally, there’s less stress. Nobody has to worry they missed a site that’s been quietly down. Alerts come through immediately, and the team can jump in before clients even notice. And if questions do come up, the detailed logs make it easy to show exactly what happened and when. 

In one case, a client believed a routine update had caused an issue. Because the update logs were readily available, Undefined was able to quickly demonstrate that the update was unrelated to the site issue. This traceability resolved the concern almost immediately and reinforced the client’s trust.

Ready for More

Since bringing WP Umbrella on board, Undefined has added more clients without spending extra time chasing updates or writing reports. Instead of feeling bogged down by a backlog of updates and monitoring, they have a process they can trust.

More importantly, they can scale. Every new client they add is included to their existing WP Umbrella dashboard, and the plugin handles all updates, backups, monitoring, and client reporting. It’s less heroic firefighting and more like running a well-tuned shop.

Since adopting WP Umbrella, we’ve 5× our maintenance client base and now generate recurring revenue that makes our business more stable. Maintenance services now represent over 15% of our annual revenue.