I currently manage around 20 sites, mostly for small businesses and nonprofits. I've been experimenting with MainWP, ManageWP, and more recently WPMU DEV, trying to find the best balance of reliability, backups, security, and ease of use. None seems to check all the boxes.

There has been a recent history of security vulnerabilities in the management plugins themselves. WPMU DEV recently had a pretty serious authentication vulnerability .... ManageWP and MainWP have had similar issues over the years. To WPMU DEV's credit, their response and patch turnaround seemed pretty quick.

I'm not necessarily looking for the cheapest solution. I'd rather pay a reasonable amount for something reliable that doesn't require constant babysitting.

A few things I'm particularly interested in:

• How reliable have the connections been between your dashboard and individual sites?
• What are you using for backups, and have you actually tested restores?
• Have you had any security concerns with the management plugins?
• How useful are the monitoring and reporting features?

I'm currently testing WPMU DEV on a couple of my own sites, and so far I'm fairly impressed. But I'm interested in hearing from people who have been using these platforms longer, especially those managing 15–30 sites or more.

What's working for you, and what drives you crazy?