What Broken Link Checker gets right
Broken Link Checker is one of the most installed maintenance plugins in the WordPress ecosystem, and for good reason. It crawls your posts, pages, and comments, watches your links over time, and tells you when one goes dead, a 404, a server error, a redirect that no longer resolves. It can notify you by email, and it lets you edit or unlink broken URLs in bulk without opening each post. The modern version offloads the heavy crawling to a cloud service so it does not hammer your own server the way the old on-site scanner used to.
If continuous link monitoring is the one job you need, it is a focused, well-understood tool with a large free tier. Credit where it is due.
The difference: a monitor versus a maintenance toolkit
Broken Link Checker does one thing: it watches your links. That is its whole job, and it is good at it.
TrueCommander treats broken-link scanning as one command among many. The same ++W bar that runs scan broken links also backs up the site, optimizes images, clears post revisions, sends templated emails, and locks down logins, 91 commands across 10 modules. You can run the scan on demand, bind it to a keyboard shortcut, drop it into a macro, or put it on a schedule with execution logs.
In short: Broken Link Checker is a dedicated link monitor. TrueCommander is a maintenance toolkit where link scanning is one of the chores it can run and schedule for you.
Shown in advanced mode, where commands start with tp. In easy mode you type the same command without the tp prefix.
Broken Link Checker vs TrueCommander, feature by feature
An honest side by side. They overlap on finding dead links and diverge on almost everything else.
| Feature | Broken Link Checker | TrueCommander |
|---|---|---|
| Scan posts and pages for broken links | scan broken links | |
| Continuous background monitoring with email alerts | Its core job | Scheduled scans, not always-on monitoring |
| Bulk edit and unlink broken URLs from one screen | Reports them; edit in the post | |
| Run the scan on a schedule | Continuous | With execution logs |
| Back up the site, maintenance mode, security | 91 commands | |
| Chain into macros and keyboard shortcuts | ||
| Runs entirely on your own server | Cloud option for crawling | |
| Price | Free on WordPress.org, paid cloud tier | $59/year, everything included |
Broken Link Checker details are from its WordPress.org listing and change over time. Check the live listing for current features and pricing.
When Broken Link Checker is the right pick
Be honest about the job. Broken Link Checker is the better fit when:
- You want always-on monitoring that emails you the moment a link dies, with no action on your part.
- You fix links in bulk and want a dedicated screen to edit or unlink dozens of URLs at once.
- Link checking is the only thing you need, and a free, single-purpose plugin is enough.
When to choose TrueCommander
TrueCommander earns its place when broken links are one item on a longer maintenance list:
- You want a scheduled weekly link scan plus backups, image optimization, revision cleanup, and security from one plugin.
- You would rather not run a separate plugin for every chore, each with its own settings page and update cycle.
- You like running maintenance from a keyboard command bar, on demand or on a schedule, with logs.
They work fine side by side. Keep Broken Link Checker for always-on monitoring if you like it, and let TrueCommander handle the rest of your maintenance. Nothing about installing one rules out the other.
Frequently asked questions
scan broken links on demand or on a schedule you set (say, every week), and logs the result. Broken Link Checker is built for continuous background monitoring; if that specific behaviour is what you need, it is the better tool for that job.scan broken links -post_type=page, so you can target just pages, just posts, or a custom type.