Staging Environment for Hosted Sites

A staging environment is a second copy of a site you host with InstaWP, running on its own URL. You can try an update, a redesign or a new plugin there, and your live site carries on as it was. When you are happy with the result you can push the staging copy over production, or refresh staging from production and start again.

Looking for staging on a site hosted somewhere else? This page covers the staging environment built into a site hosted on InstaWP. If your live site is hosted elsewhere and you connect it with the InstaWP Connect plugin, you want How to Create a Copy of your Live or Hosted site as Staging on InstaWP instead.

In this documentation, we will cover:

• How this differs from staging with the Connect plugin
• Who can create a staging environment
• Create a staging environment
• What you get
• What is not copied from production
• What is not available on a staging site
• Resource limits
• Billing
• If you downgrade below Pro
• Delete a staging environment

Let's get started 🚀

How this differs from staging with the Connect plugin

InstaWP has offered staging before, through the InstaWP Connect plugin, and the two work differently enough that it is worth reading this table before you go further. If you have used the plugin flow, the thing that will catch you out is the billing and the fact that this one leaves no trace in your site's WP admin.

	Staging environment (this page)	Staging with the Connect plugin
What it is	The production site's own staging environment	A separate site in your account
Billing	Not charged. It never appears on your bill.	Charged, on whichever plan you pick for it
Where you manage it	In the InstaWP app only	From the plugin, inside your site's WP admin
Visible in the production site's WP admin	No	Yes
Disk space	The same quota as the production site's plan	Its own plan's quota
How many	One active staging environment per site	No built-in link or limit

So if you are looking for this staging site in your production site's WordPress admin, it is not there and it is not meant to be. Everything you do with it happens in the InstaWP dashboard.

Who can create a staging environment

• Plans: Pro, Turbo and Elite. On any other plan the Staging Site page shows an upgrade option instead of the create button. View pricing.

• One active staging environment per site. To start over, pull production down to it again, or delete it and create a new one.
• Not offered on: WaaS sites, sites assigned to a client portal, and legacy accounts. Those sites show their own message on the Staging Site page.

Create a staging environment

Step 1: Open the site you want to copy from the Sites page, then select Developer Tools > Staging Site in the site's menu.

Step 2: Click Create Staging Site.

Step 3: Wait for the copy to finish.

It usually takes 2 to 3 minutes. You do not have to sit and watch it: you can leave the page, and we send you an email when the staging site is ready.

Once it exists, the site's Dashboard also carries a Staging Site card showing the staging URL, when it was created and that it is not billed, with Magic Login and Manage staging buttons. Manage staging takes you back to the same page.

What you get

A staging environment is a full InstaWP site, not a cut-down preview.

• Its own URL: the staging site is served on its own InstaWP address, separate from your live site.
• Its own WP admin: its own username and password, or open it with Magic Login from the dashboard.
• The developer tools: SFTP/SSH, Web Terminal, Run Commands, Git Deployment, Local Mount and PHP Config.
• Its own MCP integration: the staging site gets its own active MCP connection, so you can point an AI assistant at it instead of at your live site. See Connect AI Assistants to your WordPress Site using MCP.
• Install Plugins and Themes from the dashboard, the same as on any other site.
• Activity Log and Disk Usage, so you can see what happened on it and how much space it is using.
• The same disk quota as your production site's plan.
• A permanent site by default: the expiry is set to Permanent, so a staging environment never expires on its own. It stays until you delete it.
• A link back to its parent: a Production Site card names the site it was copied from, with a link straight to it. In the Sites list, the staging site appears nested under its production site.
• Suspend Site in the Danger Zone, if you want to take it offline without deleting it.

In Plan Details, a staging site shows its plan name as Staging and has no Cost row, because it is not billed.

Once it exists, you can move changes in either direction. See Pull and Push Your Staging Site.

What is not copied from production

A staging environment is a copy of your site's files and database. Settings that belong to the production site itself stay where they are and are never carried over:

• Mapped domains
• The CDN pull zone and SSL certificates
• Tags
• SSH keys
• The site's plan and site settings

This works the same way when you push in the other direction. A production site with a mapped primary domain keeps serving that domain after a push, because the domain never travels with the copy.

What is not available on a staging site

A staging environment is meant for testing, so the features that belong to a live site are switched off on it:

• Monitor
• Performance
• Security
• Object Cache settings
• Insta-Optimize
• Shield
• Backups
• CDN and domain mapping
• Plan change
• Purge cache
• Site transfer

These pages are hidden from the staging site's menu, and opening one directly returns a 403 error. That is expected rather than a fault: if you have bookmarked one of these pages on a production site and land on the same page for a staging site, this is why. Use the production site for all of the above.

To transfer ownership of a site that has staging, transfer the production site. Its staging environment goes with it.

💡 The Staging Site menu item belongs to the production site, so it does not appear in the staging site's own menu. To get back to the panel from a staging site, open the Sites page, expand the production site and click its staging row.

Resource limits

A staging environment runs on a smaller resource envelope than the production site it was copied from:

• Not intended for load testing. It is built for trying changes out, so a benchmark run against it will not tell you anything useful about how your production site performs.
• No CDN and no Shield.
• No automated backups. The Backups page is not available on a staging site either. If an experiment goes wrong there, pull production down to staging again and start over.
• The same disk quota as the production site, so a large site still behaves like a large site.
• Object cache stays on, which is where a lot of caching-related plugin problems actually show up.

The Worker Count shown in a staging site's Plan Details is the production site's figure, not the staging site's. It is there for reference. A staging environment is provisioned with its own smaller allocation, which is why it is not the place to load test.

Billing

A staging environment is free. It does not appear on your bill, for as long as you keep it. You are billed for the production site as usual.

This is the main difference from staging with the Connect plugin, which creates a separate site that is charged on whichever plan you pick for it.

If you downgrade below Pro

Moving a site to a plan that does not include staging starts a 7 day grace period. During it:

• The staging site keeps working.
• An in-app warning tells you the exact date it will be removed: Your plan no longer includes staging sites. This staging site will be removed on [date] unless you upgrade.
• Upgrading again within those 7 days cancels the removal and the staging site stays.

If the grace period ends without an upgrade, the staging environment is deleted. The production site is not affected.

Delete a staging environment

Open Developer Tools > Staging Site on the production site and click the trash icon in the corner of the Staging Site panel.

Deleting a staging environment is permanent

The staging site and everything on it are removed and cannot be restored. Your production site is untouched. If there is work on staging you want to keep, push it to production first.

A delete is refused while a pull or a push is still running. Wait for the sync to finish, then try again.

You can delete a staging environment even if your plan no longer includes staging.

Related Articles

• Pull and Push Your Staging Site - Move changes between staging and production
• Manage Staging Environments via API - Create, sync and delete over the API
• Clone Site - Make an independent copy that is billed as its own site
• View and Manage Backups - Back up production before a push