Hi MainWP team,
I’m writing once again about the long-standing pagination problem that makes the dashboard unusable on large networks. For years we’ve reported that pages like Updates and Plugins try to load the entire dataset for 300 + sites in one go, freezing the browser and pushing PHP into time-outs. Each new release brings nice extras, but this core scalability issue is still exactly where we left it.
Many of us have opened tickets, voted on roadmap cards, and shared detailed logs showing memory spikes and 502 errors. The reply is always “we’re aware and it’s on the list”, yet no concrete ETA ever materialises. Splitting a network into multiple dashboards or beefing up server specs is a workaround, not a fix; any serious management tool should handle pagination server-side out of the box.
We love MainWP for its openness and flexibility, but ignoring a fundamental blocker for high-volume users sends the message that our feedback doesn’t matter. Please share a clear timeline—or at least an honest explanation—so we can decide whether to keep investing in this platform or start migrating elsewhere. After several years of the same conversation, we need action, not promises.
Thanks for listening.
I’m managing 325 sites in 1 dashboard and don’t have any issues. My dashboard is running on a dedicated server, together with about 177 of the child sites. Other sites are hosted elsewhere. My dashboard is open all day, synchronizing and installing updates throughout the day.
Whenever I have an issue or find a bug or improvement, I report it to support and they help mostly within a day and very often within 1 or a few hours. All depending on the severity and difficulty of the issue of course.
I hear quite some frustration in your post, so I want to try to help by asking to link to previous reported issues, that are still open/unsolved and related to your case. Because there might be factors involved outside of MainWP and hopefully we can help each other to find a solution.
Can you please go to “Manage plugins”, select “all” sites from your side panel, and search for a specific plugin? This is a very common operation when, for example, you have to look on which sites a specific plugin is installed on.
How long does it take in your environment to give you results?
I just selected all sites and did a search for all Active plugins matching “Woo” to make sure I would get a serious list of results.
Time: about 2 seconds.
ok, thank you. What if you don’t filter for anything? So to get alle the plugin list?
About 6 seconds for all active plugins for all sites.
About 5 seconds for all active + inactive plugins for all sites.
Most sites don’t have a relation with eachother and have different webdevs, so it’s not that all sites have a similar plugin list.
Can you use the Query Monitor plugin to see what is taking the most time in performing an action? Is it a certain query?
Have you checked your database in phpMyAdmin to see if there are very huge tables or something?
Have you already tried to do a test with all plugins disabled except your MainWP Dashboard of course?
Hey @TheDarkMist and @josklever
The slowdown can happen with a large number of sites and usually when the Updates backlog is huge.
All update info is stored as a single field inside each site row, so the Dashboard has to pull everything at once. There’s no way to paginate until we split that data into its own table.
We’re reworking it so that the relevant informations sits in their own table with real server-side pagination, but the change is big and won’t make the upcoming 5.4.1 release.
It is queued for the next major release instead.