Easy Updates Manager and WordPress 5.5

Easy Updates Manager has long been the leader in WordPress update management. We’ve watched Easy Updates Manager go from a humble 10,000 installs to its current 300,000 install count.

With WordPress 5.5, auto-updates have landed in WordPress Core. This is exciting.

With this latest WordPress update, we had to make the tough decision whether to natively integrate with WordPress Core’s interpretation of automatic updates, in regards to plugins and themes. While the native core integration of auto-updates is well-thought and we foresee it becoming more powerful, EUM has taken the decision to continue to control updates through our unique and innovative interface.

One example is our plugins and themes screen. Users can still enable auto-updates through those screens and it integrates well with core emails and our log functionality. Additionally, you can also disable updates completely for certain assets.

EUM also integrates out-of-the-box with most third-party plugins and has worked with hosts throughout the years to make native automatic updates to plugins and themes a possibility, even on managed hosts.

When a user couples automatic updates with backups that most managed hosts handle natively, or our own UpdraftPlus backup solution, users are covered even if the worst should happen.

With EUM Free, we have identified that most users simply want auto-updates to be enabled holistically throughout WordPress. This includes plugin/theme updates, translation updates and WordPress Core updates (minor and major versions).

We foresee automatic updates, as they have landed in Core, to be a popular feature. We provide additional features with our Premium offering.

With EUM Premium, users are given more control over updates. Examples of our popular Premium features include:

• Update scheduling – Control when updates are run to avoid excessive server load and downtime.
• Logs – Logs are a native feature, but premium allows you to integrate logs with third-party services such as Slack. The export log functionality also allows you to generate a report for clients.
• Email reports of pending updates – If for some reason an update isn’t available through auto-updates, we can send you a periodic report of updates that need action. This will also work if you have disabled an asset from updating.

At Easy Updates Manager, we will strive to give users the features they need to have full control over their updates and will continue working with WordPress Core in regards to automatic updates. As Core updates mature, we will strive to integrate with native Core functionality when it makes sense.