How to Fix a Stuck Maintenance Mode Page

Why am I seeing this?

When you deactivate maintenance mode from the ManageWP dashboard but the maintenance or “Website Coming Soon” page still shows on your site, it’s almost always a caching issue. The deactivation went through, but your site’s cache is still serving the maintenance page to visitors. The fix is to flush your cache, or if that doesn’t work, remove the maintenance flag directly from your database. Most users resolve this in under two minutes.

Key Takeaways

• Maintenance mode gets “stuck” when cached pages continue serving the maintenance screen after you’ve already deactivated it in ManageWP.
• Flushing all caching layers (site, server, CDN) resolves it in most cases.
• If cache flushing doesn’t work, deleting the mwp_maintenace_mode row from your database removes ManageWP’s maintenance mode immediately.

What typically causes this?

• A caching plugin is serving a cached version of your homepage
• Server-level caching (common on managed hosting plans) is serving the maintenance page
• A CDN has cached the maintenance page at the edge and is serving it to visitors regardless of what your origin server returns

How do I fix this?

Step 1: Deactivate maintenance mode and flush all cache

1. From your ManageWP dashboard, open the affected website.
2. In the left sidebar, click Maintenance Mode.
3. Click Deactivate maintenance mode. If it’s already showing as deactivated, the toggle worked but cached pages are the problem.
4. Flush every caching layer:
   • Clear your caching plugin’s cache from within wp-admin
   • Clear your host’s server-level cache through your hosting control panel
   • If you’re behind a CDN, purge the CDN cache as well
5. Visit your site in an incognito/private browser window to confirm the maintenance page is gone.

If the site loads normally, you’re done. If the maintenance page persists even after flushing all cache layers, the maintenance flag is still active in your database. Continue to Step 2.

Step 2: Remove the maintenance mode flag from your database

If cache flushing didn’t resolve it, you can remove ManageWP’s maintenance mode directly from the database:

1. Log in to your hosting control panel and open phpMyAdmin (the database management tool most hosts provide — in cPanel, it’s under the Databases section).
2. Select your WordPress database from the left sidebar.
3. Open the _options table (it will be prefixed with your table prefix, usually wp_options).
4. Search for the row with the option_name value mwp_maintenace_mode.
5. Delete that row.

The maintenance page will disappear immediately. No cache flush needed after this step since you’ve removed the flag the maintenance page relies on.

Note: This removes ManageWP’s maintenance mode specifically. WordPress also has its own built-in maintenance mode that uses a .maintenance file in the site’s root directory. If you’re seeing a default “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance” message instead of ManageWP’s custom page, that’s a different mechanism. Delete the .maintenance file from your site’s root folder via your host’s File Manager or an SFTP client to clear it.

What to keep in mind for next time?

Whenever you activate or deactivate maintenance mode, flush all cache layers immediately after. Maintenance mode toggles happen at the application level, but caching layers serve stored versions of your pages without checking whether the underlying state has changed.

Still stuck?

If you’ve flushed all cache and removed the database row but the maintenance page still appears, contact ManageWP support with:

• The website URL still showing the maintenance page
• Which caching layers you’ve already cleared
• Whether the mwp_maintenace_mode row was present in your database or not

Frequently Asked Questions

Will removing the database row affect anything else on my site?

No. The mwp_maintenace_mode row is used exclusively to signal that ManageWP’s maintenance mode is active. Deleting it simply deactivates maintenance mode. No other site functionality depends on it.

What’s the difference between ManageWP’s maintenance mode and WordPress’s built-in one?

ManageWP’s maintenance mode is controlled through the dashboard and stored as a database option (mwp_maintenace_mode). WordPress’s built-in maintenance mode activates automatically during core, plugin, or theme updates and relies on a .maintenance file in the site’s root directory. They’re separate mechanisms with separate fixes.