OnePress: A cost-effective way for multi-brand setups to leverage WordPress Multisite at scale
As enterprise organizations grow, so does digital complexity. A new brand launch or acquisition, a regional expansion, a time-sensitive campaign, each adds another site (a full-fledged digital property) to your portfolio. Individually, they drive momentum. Collectively, they create overhead.
And what often begins as isolated site launches eventually morphs into a fragmented web ecosystem, lacking shared governance, suffering from inconsistent branding, and plagued by inefficiencies.
By the time an enterprise reaches a certain scale, no two properties look or behave alike. Achieving parity in branding, performance, and functionality often requires costly reengineering, slowing time-to-market, diluting brand presence, and creating fragmented customer journeys across regions and business units.
To compete effectively, marketing teams need more than just a collection of websites, they need a connected platform that supports reuse, governance, and agility across the ecosystem.
Enter WordPress Multisite.
Three approaches to WordPress Multisite setups
When it comes to installing multisite WordPress setups, there are essentially three ways to go about it. Some enterprises run hundreds of sites from a single WordPress Multisite installation. Others operate standalone sites connected through shared systems. A few also set up hybrid systems. We’ve worked with all three kinds, and we’ve helped bring structure to each.
1. The standard WordPress Multisite way: A single WP installation
This is the native approach WordPress provides. One WordPress installation powers multiple websites under the same codebase. It’s a lean, centralized setup, commonly used by enterprises with brands, product lines, target markets, and more.
Each site runs on shared infrastructure here, can inherit global themes or plugins, and remains part of the same codebase, making updates, governance, and consistency easier to maintain at scale (when done right).
2. The connected standalone sites model: Independent, yet unified
Not every enterprise setup starts with (or needs) WordPress Multisite. Many organizations end up with independent WordPress sites that weren’t originally designed to talk to each other. Over time though, they still need to connect: share design systems, unify content workflows, consolidate analytics, and align branding, without rebuilding everything from scratch.
In such cases, staying “separate but connected” often proves more strategic than forced consolidation. This model maintains team-level autonomy while enabling standardization where it matters.
Depending on organizational goals, these distributed WordPress ecosystems can still share core assets: from design systems and governance protocols to content syndication, analytics frameworks, and deployment tooling, all without centralizing everything under a single WordPress installation.
3. The hybrid WordPress architecture: Multisite + standalone, working together
Sometimes the answer isn’t either/or. Large organizations often benefit from a hybrid setup, where a WordPress Multisite network powers a group of sites, while other strategic or legacy properties remain on standalone WordPress builds or even non-WordPress CMSs.
This setup allows enterprises to consolidate where possible (e.g., regional marketing sites under a shared platform), while maintaining independent builds where needed.
With the right planning, even a hybrid setup can share core infrastructure, like CI/CD pipelines, design systems, and MarTech integrations, so it’s all still consistent and scalable.
All WordPress Multisite models can support marketing at scale (but when done right)
Whether you’re running hundreds of sites under a centralized WordPress Multisite installation, managing a network of independently hosted instances stitched together through shared systems, or going with a hybrid model, all models are viable at scale, when implemented with structure, clarity, and the right architectural guardrails.
But that’s exactly where many setups fall short.
Even in centralized multisite setups, repeat work, fragmented branding, and disconnected content strategies creep in, all getting in the way of marketing. Without the right governance, shared systems, and design standards, what starts as a scalable solution often turns into a patchwork, costing teams time, consistency, and momentum.
That’s where we come in with OnePress.
We’ve spent over a decade working with enterprise teams navigating these complexities, whether modernizing legacy networks, consolidating fragmented ecosystems, or scaling new brand portfolios. And from that experience, we built OnePress. With OnePress, we help enterprise marketing teams streamline sprawling site networks, eliminate duplication, and unlock reusable systems that support both speed and scale.
OnePress for optimizing marketing in (standard, distributed, & hybrid) WordPress Multisite networks
OnePress is our enterprise framework for doing WordPress Multisite right. It’s not a product, and it’s more than just a service layer.
OnePress is how we bring governance, efficiency, and long-term maintainability to your multisite ecosystem (whether centralized, distributed, or hybrid).
It started as an internal playbook, drawing from real-world lessons learned building and scaling some of the most complex multisite WordPress environments. But over time, it became something more a structured, repeatable way to build multi-brand digital ecosystems.
OnePress layers operational excellence on top of your existing infrastructure, supporting your marketing in ways :
- Reusable design systems that keep brand expression consistent across every site
- Shared content hubs and syndication tools that eliminate duplication
- Customizable governance models with permissioning, workflows, and auditability
- Centralized integration patterns for Martech tools, analytics, and localization
- CI/CD pipelines and deployment workflows tailored for speed and reliability
Whether you’re consolidating, expanding, or just trying to standardize your ecosystem, OnePress brings structure to scale, without sacrificing flexibility. OnePress helps you achieve true WordPress “multisiteness.”
In this handbook, we’ll walk you through how OnePress helps you create a true WordPress multisite infrastructure, where you can:
- Launch new sites with minimal overhead
- Share design and content across brands without duplication
- Centralize Martech tools and integrations
- Enforce governance and brand consistency
- Enable analytics and personalization at scale
Note that this isn’t about rebuilding. You can start your OnePress journey wherever you are. Enterprises just like you are already implementing this model in phases and are experiencing the benefits already.
Let’s get started.
