Easy Drag & Drop Page Builder that adds a splash page to your site that it's perfect for a coming soon page, maintenance or landing page.
As of April 2026, LightStart is a WordPress admin plugin with 500K+ active installations and a 4.3/5 rating from 860 reviews. It has been downloaded 19M+ times in total. Requires WordPress 4.7+ and PHP 7.1+. Available on WordPress.org since 2010. Actively maintained — updated within the last month. Download volume is stable this week. Support resolution rate: 50%. Top alternative: Redux Framework.
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).
My isssue (which I’m currently waiting for help with)- is that it broke my Woocommerce/Divi Shop. The Maintenance Mode is still active on my Homepage even after deactivating Lightstart.
I’m sure it will work for you once you study the documentation. It isn’t easy for beginners.
Not fond of having another Plugin added automatically, but I deleted that.
I may change my review if I ever get help or a solution.
The actual plugin I wanted to use worked fine but it installed two other plugins – an image optimization plugin and some other plugin called Otter. No prompts, notification or nothing. Very sketch.
LightStart is a great addition to any WordPress site if you’re looking for a lightweight, reliable, and easy-to-use solution. It installs quickly, works smoothly without slowing down performance, and offers practical customization options that are simple to configure even for non-technical users. I particularly appreciate how clean and efficient it is — no unnecessary bloat, no conflicts with themes or plugins, and consistent performance throughout. It’s a dependable plugin that delivers exactly what it promises and is ideal for anyone who values speed, simplicity, and stability in their WordPress setup.
Very helpful.
I was checking out maintenance plugins and tried this one. Forced install of a page builder and image optimizer without asking. Who knows what else it has done without asking.
| WordPress | 4.7+ requiredTested up to 6.9.4 |
| PHP | 7.1+ required |
Version 2.6.20 (2025-09-04)
Version 2.6.19 (2025-07-11)
Version 2.6.18 (2025-05-27)
Version 2.6.17 (2025-04-16)
Version 2.6.16 (2025-01-10)
…and 35 more changes
Plugin data sourced from WordPress.org. Analysis and metrics by PluginSift.