In previous versions of the Maven site plugin, deploying the site documentation through SSH always resulted in 'Build Successful', even when e.g. the SSH isn't available. This was supposed to have been corrected in version 1.6.1, as indicated here: http://maven.apache.org/reference/plugins/site/announcements/announcement-1.6.1.txt However, the problem is still present. The solution is simple : just add an attribute failonerror="true" in <exec> calls in plugin.jelly.