In short: Your Health Score is one simple number, from 0 to 100, that tells you how well your site is being looked after. Green means all is well. A number that starts slipping is your early warning.
What it is
Your Health Score is the single number that answers one question: how well is your site being looked after, right now?
It is a value from 0 to 100, shown as the headline figure across your dashboards, your site pages, and your reports. Instead of asking you to read six different technical readouts, Maintena watches all of them for you, weighs them by how much they matter, and rolls them into one score you can glance at in a second.
The score is not a marketing gauge or a rough estimate. It is built from real, current data about your site: your plugins, your themes, your WordPress version, the version of PHP your site runs on, how reliably your site has been responding, and the state of your security certificate. When any of those change, your score changes with them.
Think of it as the equivalent of a car's overall condition rating. A green number means your site is in good shape. A falling number is an early signal that something needs attention before it becomes a problem for your visitors.
How it works
Maintena reads six signals from your site, scores each one from 0 to 100, then blends them into a single weighted number. Signals that carry more risk count for more. The result is rounded to one decimal place and saved.
The six signals and how much each counts
| Signal | What it looks at | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Plugins | How many of your plugins are up to date, and whether any have known vulnerabilities | 30% |
| WordPress core | How current your WordPress version is | 20% |
| Themes | How many of your themes are up to date, and whether any have known vulnerabilities | 15% |
| Uptime | How reliably your site responded over the last 24 hours | 15% |
| PHP | Which version of PHP your site runs on | 10% |
| SSL certificate | Whether your security certificate is valid and how soon it expires | 10% |
Plugins carry the most weight because they are the most common way a WordPress site is attacked. Keeping them current and vulnerability-free does the most to protect your score, and your site.
How each signal is scored
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Plugins and themes. The score reflects the share of your plugins (or themes) that are up to date. Each plugin flagged with a known vulnerability takes points off the plugins signal, and each flagged theme takes points off the themes signal. A site with everything current and nothing flagged scores full marks here.
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WordPress core. You get full marks when your site is on the latest release. The further behind you fall, the lower this signal drops, with a larger fall for being a full version behind than for trailing by a minor update.
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PHP. Newer, supported versions of PHP score higher, because older ones stop receiving security fixes.
PHP version Score 8.3 or newer 100 8.2 90 8.1 80 8.0 70 7.4 50 Older 7.x 30 Below 7.0 10 -
Uptime. This is the percentage of checks in the last 24 hours where your site responded normally. A site that stayed up all day scores 100.
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SSL certificate. A valid certificate with plenty of time before it expires scores full marks. The score steps down as the expiry date approaches, and drops to zero if the certificate is invalid or has already expired.
Putting it together: a worked example
Imagine a site where the six signals score like this: plugins 80, themes 100, WordPress core 100, PHP 90, uptime 100, and SSL 100. Because each signal counts for a different amount, the overall score is a weighted blend rather than a simple average:
- Plugins: 80% of 30 points = 24
- Themes: 100% of 15 points = 15
- WordPress core: 100% of 20 points = 20
- PHP: 90% of 10 points = 9
- Uptime: 100% of 15 points = 15
- SSL: 100% of 10 points = 10
Added together, that is an overall Health Score of 93. The one weaker signal (a few plugins out of date) is what pulls the site down from a perfect 100, and because plugins carry the most weight, bringing them up to date is the fastest way to lift the number.
When your score updates
Your Health Score is designed to stay fresh, not to lag behind reality:
- Every time your site's agent syncs. As soon as Maintena receives new plugin, theme, or version data from your site, it recalculates the score straight away. You do not wait for an overnight job to see the effect of an update.
- Once a day across every site. A daily recalculation makes sure signals that come from continuous monitoring, like uptime and certificate status, are always reflected.
Every site you manage is scored automatically. There is no switch to turn the Health Score on or off.
Snapshots and history
Each time your score is calculated, Maintena saves a snapshot: the overall number, all six signal scores, and a record of what your site looked like at that moment. Snapshots are never overwritten, so over time they build a complete history of your site's health.
That history is what powers two things you will see on your site page:
- Trend charts showing how your overall score and each individual signal have moved over time.
- A "what changed" activity feed that compares each snapshot with the one before it and describes, in plain English, what moved. That includes plugin or theme installs, updates and removals, WordPress or PHP version changes, and vulnerabilities being flagged or cleared.
What it means for you
The colour of the number tells you at a glance where a site stands:
| Score | Band | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| 80–100 | Green | Healthy. Your site is well maintained and low risk. |
| 60–79 | Orange | Needs attention. One or more signals are slipping. |
| 0–59 | Red | Action needed. Something important is out of date, insecure, or offline. |
A few practical ways to use it:
- Scan for red and orange first. Across a list of sites, the Health Score lets you spot the ones that need work without opening each one.
- Watch the direction, not just the number. A score that drifts down over a week is telling you maintenance is falling behind, even if it is still green. The trend chart makes this easy to see.
- Use the activity feed to understand a change. If a score drops, the "what changed" feed usually explains why: a plugin fell out of date, a vulnerability was flagged, or a certificate is close to expiry.
- Read the score alongside your Success Manager. The number is a starting point for the conversation, and your Success Manager can act on what it surfaces.
What you need to do
The Health Score needs almost nothing from you to run. There are no keys to enter and no per-site setup for the score itself. What matters is making sure the signals feeding it are real:
- Install the Maintena agent on each site and let it sync. This is the platform's core onboarding step, and it supplies most of what the score is built from: your plugins, themes, and WordPress and PHP versions. Until the agent has synced at least once, the score is running on optimistic defaults rather than real data.
- Turn on Uptime and SSL monitoring for the site. With these enabled, the uptime and certificate signals reflect genuine measurements instead of neutral placeholder values.
Once the agent is connected and monitoring is on, everything else is automatic.
Good to know
- A brand-new site reads high until its first sync. Before Maintena has real data, it assumes the best rather than the worst, so a freshly added site can show a green-ish score around the low 80s. The number becomes fully trustworthy after the agent's first sync. If a new site looks unexpectedly healthy, check that its agent has connected.
- The Health Score is an indicator, not an alarm. It is designed to show status at a glance and to power trends. Time-sensitive events, like your site going down or a certificate about to expire, are raised by Maintena's dedicated monitoring and alerts, so you are notified even if you are not looking at the score.
- "Flagged" reflects current knowledge. When the feed says a plugin or theme was flagged or cleared as vulnerable, that reflects what is currently known about it. A vulnerability can be discovered, or a warning withdrawn, without the plugin itself changing.
- Your history is kept for the long term. Health snapshots are not pruned, so your trend charts and activity feed stay complete over months and years, giving you a true picture of how a site has been maintained.