Import Export Menu
View on WordPress.orgScores higher than 40% of indexed plugins
About
Import, export, and manage WordPress navigation menus. Safely migrate menu structures between sites with hierarchy, locations, and item settings intac …
What It Does
Import Export Menu lets you export and re-import WordPress navigation menus between sites or environments, preserving item hierarchy, assigned theme locations, and per-item settings. In practice, you can move a complete menu structure from staging to production, between a localhost dev site and a live server, or across multisite subsites without rebuilding links by hand. It targets a specific gap in the default WordPress importer, which does not handle menus.
Who It's For
This plugin is best suited for agencies and freelancers who build navigation menus on staging or local environments and then push them to live client sites, as well as teams managing multisite networks or franchise sites where menu structures recur across properties. It also helps solo site owners who change themes frequently and want their menus to survive the switch. For a single small site rebuilt once a year, it is overkill.
Who Should Skip It
If your site has one or two simple menus and you rarely change environments, themes, or hosts, this plugin adds unnecessary complexity, and the WordPress core Customizer import/export or a full-site migration tool will do enough. Developers comfortable running WP-CLI commands such as `wp menu import` and `wp menu export` will not gain much over the built-in alternative.
The Bottom Line
Import Export Menu is a focused, well-maintained niche plugin with a perfect maintenance score and clear utility for anyone pushing menus from staging to production. Its main real-world risk is the zero-thread support history, so test every migration on staging first and keep backups. For an overall quality score of 74.58 out of 100, it earns a conditional recommendation: install it if menus are a regular migration pain point, otherwise skip it.
Related Plugins
Pick this for SEO-focused breadcrumb trails rather than bulk menu migration, since it does not import or export menus at all.
Pick this when you need to import an entire demo site including menus, widgets, and content, not just navigation menus in isolation.
Pick this if your primary problem is building complex mega menus visually, rather than moving finished menus between environments.
Pick this for customizing the WordPress backend admin menu for roles, not for migrating the front-end navigation menus visitors see.
Pick this if your migration bottleneck is widgets and sidebars rather than navigation menus, since it leaves menus untouched.