Jetpack is one plugin that does a lot of jobs. Install it, connect it to a WordPress.com account, and you get stats, security tools, backups, an image CDN, social sharing, forms, related posts and more, switched on and off from one screen.
That’s the appeal, and for some sites it’s also the reason to leave. A site that uses three of Jetpack’s features still carries the rest of the plugin, and every part of it depends on a connection to WordPress.com. Some site owners would rather their site didn’t depend on that connection at all.
This guide is for when you’ve decided to go. It covers how to find out what you actually use, what replaces each part, the order to switch in, and how to keep your Jetpack Stats history, which is the one thing people tend to lose.
Work out what you actually use
Open Jetpack’s settings and go through each tab. Note which features are switched on, and of those, which ones you’d miss. Most sites end up with a short list: stats, maybe backups, maybe the image CDN, maybe sharing buttons or a contact form.
Check your posts as well. Jetpack adds blocks and shortcodes for forms, galleries, slideshows, related posts and payment buttons. If you’ve used any of them in old posts, those posts will need attention when Jetpack goes.
Write the list down. Everything that follows is about replacing what’s on it, and ignoring what isn’t.
Stats: keep your history before anything else
Jetpack Stats doesn’t live in your WordPress database. It’s stored on WordPress.com, which is why a site’s stats survive reinstalling Jetpack but disappear from your dashboard when you remove it. Every other analytics plugin starts counting from the day you install it, so without an import your charts start at zero.
Vireo Analytics can import your Jetpack Stats history: daily views, your top posts and your referrers. It reads them from the WordPress.com stats API using your WordPress.com API key and your site’s address. It doesn’t need the Jetpack plugin to be active, so you can run the import before or after you remove Jetpack, as long as you still have the WordPress.com account the stats belong to.
- Install Vireo Analytics and let it start counting.
- Get your API key from apikey.wordpress.com, logged in to the WordPress.com account connected to your site.
- In Vireo, go to Settings, then Import & export, and choose Jetpack Stats.
- Paste the key, enter your site address, pick the date range and start the import.
Vireo stops the import on the day before its own counting began, so days where both plugins were running aren’t counted twice. One difference to expect: Jetpack Stats doesn’t record unique visitors per day, so imported days show views for both pageviews and visitors. The Jetpack switching guide covers the details.
If your current Jetpack plan includes paid stats, it’s worth knowing what you’re replacing. At the time of writing, Jetpack’s paid stats start at $8.33 a month billed yearly for up to 10,000 views a month, with device stats, UTM tracking and region and city locations reserved for the paid tier. Vireo is free and keeps the data in your own database.
The other modules, one at a time
Go down your list and replace each feature on its own. These are the common ones and what typically takes their place.
For backups, most managed WordPress hosts back up daily and let you restore from their dashboard. If yours doesn’t, a backup plugin that stores copies off the server, in your own cloud storage, does the job. Whichever you choose, test a restore once.
For security and login protection, your host may already run a firewall and malware scanning. If not, a security plugin covers malware scans, a firewall and login protection. Two-factor authentication is available from dedicated plugins too.
Akismet, Jetpack’s spam protection, is a separate plugin from Jetpack and keeps working on its own if you want to keep it.
In place of the image CDN, Cloudflare’s free plan or your host’s built-in CDN serves images and static files from servers near your visitors. Pair it with an image optimisation plugin if you relied on Jetpack resizing images for you.
For uptime monitoring, a free external monitor checks your site every few minutes and emails you when it goes down. External is better anyway: a monitor running on the same infrastructure as your site can go down with it.
Sharing buttons and posting new articles to social networks are each covered by lightweight dedicated plugins, or by your newsletter or social scheduling tool.
Any form plugin replaces Jetpack’s contact form. Rebuild the forms you use, then check where submissions go, since Jetpack sends them to its own feedback screen.
Related posts, site search and the newsletter each have dedicated plugins and services. Search is the one to test carefully on larger sites, since Jetpack’s search runs on WordPress.com’s servers rather than your database.
If you host videos with Jetpack, move them to a video host and swap the embeds. If you used Jetpack’s ads, sign up with an ad network directly.
The order to switch in
- Import your stats history, or at least install your new analytics so it starts counting.
- Set up the replacement for whatever would hurt most if it stopped tomorrow, usually backups and security.
- Replace the rest, one feature at a time, checking each works.
- Fix old posts that use Jetpack blocks or shortcodes.
- Deactivate Jetpack, check the site, then disconnect it from WordPress.com and delete the plugin.
Doing it in this order means nothing is unprotected or uncounted in between, and if something breaks you know which change caused it.
After Jetpack is gone
Load a few pages and check for blocks or shortcodes that now show as raw text or empty space. Run a speed test and compare it with one from before. And look at your analytics after a week. Your new numbers won’t match Jetpack’s exactly, because each tool counts visitors and filters bots its own way. The bot directory shows what Vireo leaves out of the count.