Best WordPress AI Page Builders For Your Membership Websites
Build professional membership websites effortlessly! Compare the best WordPress AI page builders with member-only content features & templates.
In this video, we dive into the top AI-powered WordPress page builders specifically designed for membership websites. Discover how these innovative tools can enhance user experience, streamline content creation, and boost your site’s engagement. Whether you’re a beginner or an expert
, This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS LifterLMS
Best WordPress AI Page Builders For Your Membership Websites
#1 – Kadence WP AI
https://www.kadencewp.com/wordpress-solutions/kadence-ai/
Prices Express $69 | Plus and $169 | Ultimate $299 paid annually
#2 – Astra (Zip WP)
Prices Pay Per Use $99 No recurring payments | Pro $204 | Business $408 paid annually
#3 – Elementor
Prices Essential $60 | Advanced Solo $84 | Advanced $99 | Expert $2024 paid annually
Elementor AI plans
AI Starter: Provides 24,000 credits annually for $48/year or $3.99/month (billed annually).
AI Power: Offers 50,000 credits annually for $99/year or $8.25/month (billed annually).
AI Visionary: Includes 100,000 credits annually for $192/year or $15.99/month (billed annually).
Credit consumption
Text prompts: 1 credit.
Code prompts: 1 credit.
Image prompts: 33 credits.
Container prompts: 40 credits.
Divi ai
https://www.elegantthemes.com/ai/
Prices Divi AI $288 | Divi Pro $888 per year
Divi AI Pricing:
Monthly Subscription: $21.36 per month
Yearly Subscription: $193 per year (which is $16.08 per month, if paid annually)
WordPress.com
Prices Personal $9 | Premium $18 | Business $40 | Woo $70
Bluehost
High Performance Pro $13.95 | Premium $31.99 | Enhanced $34.49 Elite $48.99
GoDaddy (Airo)
https://www.godaddy.com/hosting/wordpress-hosting
Prices Basic $7.99 | Deluxe $10.99 | 14.99 per month
10Web
PrIces AI Stater $25 | AI Premium $36 | AI Ultimate per month
Hostinger
Premium $2.99 | Business $3.99 per month
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:00.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks, to the Membership Machine Show. This is episode 133. In this episode, we’re going to be talking about a subject that we’ve been asked to talk about, and it’s the best AI page builders for your membership or community website in 2025. AI is the buzzword. We’ve had ChatGPT5 released last week, and there are a number of WordPress plugins and hosting companies building AI into their offerings. We’re going to look at some of the leaders, some of the best, some of the non-best, and give a honest opinion about which ones you should look at, which ones maybe you should give a pass on. It should be a great show. I’ve got my ever-patient and helpful co-host, the real expert of the show, Kurt.
[00:01:40.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Kurt, would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
[00:01:45.260] – Kurt von Ahnen
Sure thing, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Annen. We own an agency here in Hutch, Kansas, called Mañana Nomas, and we specialize in membership and learning websites.
[00:01:55.920] – Jonathan Denwood
You also help at WP Tonic, don’t you?
[00:01:58.610] – Kurt von Ahnen
Absolutely. Yeah, WP Tonic and the great folks at Lifter.
[00:02:02.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Like I say, we’re going to be looking at the best AI page builders out there. But before we go into the meat and potatoes of this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. I want to point out that we also got a great course done by Kirk himself that shows you how to build a membership website using WordPress, the best WordPress technology in 2025, from beginning to end. It’s a great course. It’s normally around $49. If you go to the page that I’m just about to tell you, you can get it at half price. You will also get a token, a coupon code that will take off 50% of your first year’s hosting with WP Tonic. What a deal. To get this deal and other great goodies, all you have to do is visit WP-Tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. Get the course for half price and get your first year’s hosting for half price. What a great deal. I proposed in my show notes the number one I put, I think we leave that to last because I think that’s the best, Kirk, in my opinion.
[00:03:37.680] – Jonathan Denwood
I want some drama. I think we leave number one to last. Do you agree, Kirk?
[00:03:45.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Number one and number two to me are in the same ballpark. But yeah, I agree with you.
[00:03:52.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Now, let’s start with number two, which you quite like. The only thing is, I think it was a bit confusing at first because they’re calling it ZipWP, aren’t they? Not ASTRA.
[00:04:07.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t think it’s theirs. I don’t know if it’s theirs, if it’s a partnership, or what it is. Everything with ASTRA, to me, gets lost, Jonathan.
[00:04:15.450] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they’ve done this with a number of… Is it under Brainstorm, which is the parent company? Is it under Adam Praisley’s setup? You just never know, do you? But I suppose we’ve lost most of the audience anyway, because does it really matter? Let’s get back on track. What do you like about it? Even though it’s called not Aster, it’s called ZitWP?
[00:04:43.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, it’s baked into the process. So right through your WordPress admin dashboard, you’re going to say, I want to use harder templates, and then it’s going to say, do you want to do AI or do you want to use stock templates? And then you’ll say AI, and then it launches into the Zip WP interface, where you basically describe your project. It enhances the description with AI, lets you choose from pictures or upload your own, and then lets you pick a layout, specify colors and fonts, and then it builds it.
[00:05:23.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Are they using full-site editing?
[00:05:28.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s But ASTRA is standard Gutenberg, just like Cadence. It’s not full-site editing. I don’t know where that is on the roadmap for them. I’ve never really looked.
[00:05:41.660] – Jonathan Denwood
What about the pricing? Because I looked at some of the others and they charge extra. They give you an initial… It’s token-based. You get so many tokens to start off with. And then if you use them up, you have to buy some more tokens. Others say they’re offering it for free, but there must be a limit, or it’s not very clear. I didn’t have time to look up the Asha. I was getting there. Do you know they charge extra for tokens?
[00:06:14.160] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you sign up for ZipWP, you get so many installations or so many things as part of the package, and then you can upgrade to a pro version or something like that. Now, at our agency, we offer Different price buy-ins, different packages for obviously different clients. This is one of the tools that’s in our belt. We use this quite often.
[00:06:38.100] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. Right. So onto a biggie, LMA Elemator. They’re offering AI. Well, it’s Elemator with AI, isn’t it? All the things that you said with Asha was probably there. I did do a I did do a review of it. It’s got all the good points of Asha and all the bad points of Asha with AI on top, isn’t it?
[00:07:13.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
Elemator is an interesting user interface to me. There are certain elements that they labeled as AI that I really feel are just like access to a library, like access to a container library or access to a pattern library, like the way you would think in a pattern library in a normal editing situation. But they labeled it AI. And so then I’m like, well, where’s the artificial intelligence side of this? But inside Elementor, what I found interesting was when you use Zipwp as a website builder. It’s just that all Zipwp is doing is building you a starter template, but a starter template based on your information. Whereas Elementor is So step by step, leveraging AI tools for different things. And so I can use Elementor to refresh a paragraph. I can use Elementor to rewrite my title. I can use Elementor to bring in a custom image that AI will create for me. But to me, that’s not really much different than going to Groch and saying, Hey, Grok, make me an image of such and such, and then downloading it and putting it in my website. It just seems like for people that are Elementor users, it’s all in that screen, everything’s happening right there instead of having to outsource to a ChatGPT or Groch or Claudewindow.
[00:08:38.100] – Jonathan Denwood
So they don’t give you a… If you want to start a fresh website, they don’t give you AI prompts where they ask you…
[00:08:49.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it does. It does because remember, Elementor has the… I don’t think they call them starter sites. I think I’m going to make myself look like an idiot here. I think it’s in the template section. What did they call that in that menu of theirs? It’s not startup sites. It’s called something else.
[00:09:08.540] – Jonathan Denwood
I have a new tech.
[00:09:10.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
But they have those full site templates, and then they have the AI components to reinforce those site templates.
[00:09:18.580] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. The normal pricing, like with Ashtal ZitWP, you got Pay Per Use 99 or Pro, which is 204, business is 408 annually, plus you got the token cost. But I don’t know what the 999 Pay Per Use I don’t quite know. That’s round Ashtra Zip WP. With Alimator, you got the normal prices, which is essential, $60, Avance, Solo, 84, Avance, 99, Expert. I don’t know how much expert is, actually. Then you got on top, I don’t know if it’s on top or it’s a different pricing structure. You got AI starter with 24,000 credits annually for 48 a year or 3,99 a month or AL Power, 50,000 credits, 99 a year or 8,25 per month. And Visionary, 10,000 credits or charged 192 a year or 15,99 a month. I’m not sure if you buy the normal Elementor. It’s all a bit confusing because they got their hosted version, haven’t they? Then they’ve They got the plugin, and then they got other options, haven’t they?
[00:11:04.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I was looking at the hosted option versus the Elementor website builder packages for plugin plans only. I don’t know, Maybe this is AI, but what I’m seeing is reading different than what you just read. I see the essential plan, the advanced solo plan, the advanced plan, and the expert plan, but it’s anywhere from $5 a month to $17 a month. That would be, I’m assuming, the AI injection in the Elementor above and beyond your existing Elementor plan.
[00:11:40.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, you might be right. It’s all a bit confusing, but not as confusing as I found some of the other offerings that we’re going to be talking about, which was mind numbing the whole website, I found totally confusing. But we got that for later. On to the next one. Oh, old friend. Lovely people, Divi AI. What can we say about Divi AI, Kurt? I’ll let you start that.
[00:12:11.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
I didn’t get to use it in anger or really play with it. And I’m going to… Man, at the risk of upsetting some people, I just don’t enjoy working in divvy. To me, it’s a difference between a PC and a Mac. I’m a PC person. Other people like Macs. It doesn’t mean Macs are bad. People that love them, love them. People that love divvy, love divvy. Me, personally, I don’t get along well with it. So I didn’t really dive into that too much. All the buzz around Divi 5 and then thinking that that new layer of divvy is coming out with AI on top I’m sure that the people that are in those circles are coming out of their skin with excitement. I’m sure that this is just wonderful. It builds the entire site. So that’s one thing. I was just talking about Elementor where it seems more like it’s focused on the elements of a site than on the full site. Whereas when we started talking about ASTRO, that talks about it builds the whole site, Divi builds the whole site, but it also creates any type of web page, and it helps you define global styles and stuff in the way that it works.
[00:13:33.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m really interested in seeing what people do with it and just how deep the AI really is.
[00:13:40.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. We’re assuming it works with divi 4 and the new divi5. Well, I’m not even sure Divvy5 is out of public beta. I just can’t get my head around it. But like you say, they’ve got a very big and a lot of those people just love Divi, don’t they? I can’t get my head around it.
[00:14:08.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Where I’m getting lost with both Elementor and Divi, and this is going to make me sound like a hypocrite because I just talked about it in ASTRA. In ASTRA, when it says, Choose some pictures, it says, Upload your own pictures or choose from these stock images. And it goes to these stock image libraries and brings you images. When you are in Elementor and Divi, it’s saying that AI is creating the images for you. I don’t know how you feel about this, Jonathan, but my lack of expertise and creativity in the AI space with generating images from scratch, I have always come up with people that have seven fingers, an extra eye in the middle of their head. It just doesn’t seem like imagery is where it needs to be yet to put I’m going to say this delicately, but to put it out for the common user building in this structure. I just don’t know that this is the right environment for those tools yet.
[00:15:11.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I just don’t want to be too negative about asht. No, people that love it, love it.
[00:15:19.950] – Kurt von Ahnen
They absolutely love it.
[00:15:22.860] – Jonathan Denwood
But the thing with Animator, I think sometimes it’s a really powerful tool But to me, it’s more like a quasar professional tool with all the power and options it offers. To me, it’s a bit overwhelming to those that just want to build a quick site for their small business, if you know what I mean.
[00:15:54.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Now, again, at the risk of becoming the butt of somebody’s anger, when I’m in Elementor, that complicated thing that you mentioned, when I’m in the user interface for Elementor, it’s like I got to figure something out and I can play and click around and move. I can generally find what I’m looking for. Might take a little bit, but it’s there. And to your point, it’s pretty granular control over the content on the page. And so if there’s a control for that item, for that element, I’m going to see it there. When I’m in Divi, they’ve done such a good job of cleaning the interface and making it look sterile and easy, like they’ve tried to make it look easy, that when you try to get that granular control over an element, it can be real confusing on what three-button thing to open up and find what you’re looking for. I think the controls are more apparent in Elementor than they are in Divi.
[00:16:52.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it could be. Let’s move on. Or should I I’ll talk about number one because these are the plug-ins. Let’s go for it. Let’s talk about Cadence. Cadence WPAI, what’s its strong points and what’s its weaknesses, Kurt?
[00:17:14.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to say I really don’t see weaknesses with the way that they’ve done it. They do a couple of extra things that ZipWP doesn’t do. So the format, the user experience is very, very similar. So what’s the name of your project? Give us a paragraph about your project up to so many characters. Then use AI to enhance that description of the project. And so all of that so far sounds the same as ZipWP. But one thing that is different is the next screen in Cadence starts to go into search engine optimization. Hey, let’s pick some keywords. Let’s inject some keywords into this project for you. And so it starts to give you that extra layer of service from your AI agent, I guess, helps you build that. And then it goes in to select some images, your fonts, your colors, and let’s pick the format, right? And then let’s build this thing. And it does it, and it does it quickly. And I am not someone that relies heavily on AI for finished product. To me, it’s like this is one of the really quickest ways to a first draft. I’ve always been I’m a fan of Cadence’s starter templates.
[00:18:33.020] – Kurt von Ahnen
I always thought those starter templates were pretty solid, but it was difficult in that, let’s say you have a pottery business and then you upload some starter template on yoga, right? And you’re like, well, I like the layout, but now I got to figure out everywhere that it says yoga, I got to change something for a pottery. And it just gets to be too confusing for too many new people. This AI product, it builds the sample product with relevant material. And so it makes the website, I’ll steal your word quasi, it uses it quasi-usable. And it seems like the jump from first draft to production is shortened quite a bit with this AI tool.
[00:19:15.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. How does it deal with images? Does it use free image library resources and give you a selection and you can choose? Because I think that was One of the strengths of Asht is that they seem to have that.
[00:19:34.220] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I forget if it’s Unsplash or one of those other tie-ins to pixels, but it ties into stock imagery. What do we call that? It’s royalty-free, right? Yeah, royalty-free. So it was free. Stock imagery.
[00:19:48.550] – Jonathan Denwood
You won’t get a nasty letter from Getty.
[00:19:51.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
Exactly. And what I use it for is clients, especially, startup clients. Startup clients generally don’t have content ready. They think they do, but they don’t. They hand you a file or a folder full of stuff, and it’s like, this really isn’t usable. This isn’t web quality stuff. And so what I find is when you use these AI tools, you can select some stock images and put them in as placeholders. And then that gives the client a really good idea or you, the user that’s listening to this and building your own website, gives you the ability to say, oh, that’s what I need. I noticed all my pictures are one by one aspect ratio. I really need a couple of 16 by nine, or I really need a couple of… And then by using those placeholders, you get an idea of, hey, what’s the content that should be in there? I can make that content and replace it.
[00:20:45.820] – Jonathan Denwood
What’s the interface like compared to ASTRA or Elementor or DIVI?
[00:20:53.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
I don’t know who copied who. I don’t know who hired who staff away, but the interface The space between Cadence and ASTRA, well, Cadence and ZipWP, is damn near the same thing. Dang near the same thing. I mean, yeah, the text blocks look different, but the layout and things are very similar. There is a difference where you pick the global colors and the fonts. That screen looks different, but functions the same. You click on a font and it changes the font on the sample screen. You click another font, it changes it again. Same with the colors. This is the range of colors for the site for my global color palette, and it just instantly changes in the sample. And then whatever you choose, it writes that over the whole whatever it’s building. And so I think Cadence and ASTRA are extremely similar in the use case. The only real difference I see is that Cadence gives you a head start on at least thinking, what are keywords for my industry for my project? And if I were going to move forward with SEO, how would that work? The other thing that Zipwp does that Cadence does not do is at the very end, ZipWP IT says, did you want to have a shopping cart?
[00:22:17.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
Did you want to have social, I don’t know, chat? There’s like four or five things. What are the features you want on the website? And then what it does is it leverages its partners or its intercompany plugins or whatever. It loads that into the site. I’m saying this because I am not sure if they’re partners or because SureCart is one of them, SureTriggers.
[00:22:39.680] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t think they’re doing all that for free. I think they offer free products, don’t they? They offer free versions, most of their stuff, don’t they?
[00:22:51.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Whereas Cadence and the infrastructure of Cadence and all the things that they have, their last screen doesn’t say, Hey, what are these five six other tools we can front load for you? It just makes the site. Then if you wanted to add a special form tool or something like that, you would add that plug in and integrate it. Whereas with Zip WP, it’ll add SureForm and automatically integrate that to the contact page.
[00:23:17.180] – Jonathan Denwood
One thing I noticed with the Zip WP, I don’t know if Cadence does the same, it’s got some cool wireframing layouts, patterns, and the whole page changes. Do you know if the Cadence have some good wireframing?
[00:23:37.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, this is where I get spoiled. Almost all of the Cadence sites that I use have Cadence Pro, so I’m not sure if it’s part if it’s a Cadence or if it’s part of Cadence Pro. But Cadence Pro with Cadence blocks and all of the Cadence suite of things, they have an incredible pattern library, which you can go in and you can very quickly, let’s say you wanted to, I don’t know, make a community page or maybe you want to make an archive of custom post types for a certain business category. I just said it like it’s easy, but that’s a complicated thing. In Cadence Pro, you could literally just be like, make a new template page and then go to the pattern library and be like, header, hero, archive block, duplicate that archive block seven times, pagination at the bottom, and then boom, Bob’s your uncle, you got a page done, and it’s all done with the pattern library, which is pretty cool.
[00:24:40.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think Ben and his team have done a good job on this myself.
[00:24:45.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, like I said, I get spoiled because I use Cadence Pro quite a bit, and I forget- Our beloved WP users get it all as part of our bundle, don’t they? Yeah, it’s all in there.
[00:24:55.130] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, dear. What a package. The other thing is, when you were saying about the SEO, it’s handy if it like the meta description and the title. But as you know, and I’ve learned the hard way, That’s why I’m always love AI, but also extremely skeptical, skeptic at the same time, because as you know, Google thinks AI content is just dirt. If AI was so too intelligent and that, Google wouldn’t… Basically, if it finds you’re using a lot of AI content, this is a generality, folks. There are people that use AI effectively. But a lot of the time, if you use a lot of AI content and Google can detect that you’re doing it, you’re not going to do very well in search. They’re not going to treat you with a lot of kindness, based on my experience. But it’s an ever-changing scenario. We’ve looked at the… Like, Animator offers a hosting. Cadence is part of Stella, which is part of Liquid Web. They offer hosts. They’re now offering a hosted plugin solution. They’re all copying me, Kirk. I started this two, three years ago. But we’re giving a good review. In the second half, we’re going to be looking at some of the hosting companies’ solutions.
[00:26:52.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Should be a great load of knowledge there. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. But before we go into the second half, we got another great resource. It’s the Membership Machine Show Facebook group. Totally free. I’ve been on holiday, been moving, and then neglected my posting on there, but I’m getting back into it this week, next week. But it’s a great community. Totally free. You got any questions that come up, During the show. It’s a great place to put your questions on there. Me, Kirk, or somebody on the community will probably answer them for you. Like I say, it’s a great resource. Go over to Facebook and put in the Membership Machine Show Facebook group and join us there. Let’s move on. Let’s move on to wordpress. Com. Uh-oh. Their AI tool. I saw Matt Madejus review of it as I was doing my research. He’s got some other great podcast, folks, really, but more aimed at the WordPress professional rather than somebody trying to build a membership or community-facing website. But he’s got a lot of knowledge, and like I said, he’s a friend of WP Tonic.
[00:28:22.840] – Jonathan Denwood
So he did a review, and I looked at some and I played around with it. I’m not going to say anymore, what did you make of it, Kurt? Well, that says it all right. He does that when he does he’s got a call with me, folks. He size there. No, he doesn’t.
[00:28:41.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
It seemed they pitch it like it’s magic. I just don’t believe the hype. I don’t see that it could possibly do or give the results that it is purported to bring. That’s harsh way to say it, right?
[00:29:02.490] – Jonathan Denwood
But- I think that’s a very diplomatic. Kirk had the pleasure of sampling me this morning when I got a bit agitated. I could be a little bit more direct than that statement, can’t I, Kirk?
[00:29:16.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
You can be. But the idea that it says start with AI and it’s like, start a landing page for my shoes store, and it’s like, bam, there’s your landing page. I’m like, no, that’s not real. Like I said earlier with the making the images in AI, you got to master using some of these tools. I think the people that are stapling AI to these things, they’re purporting these projects, these tools, as if they’re magic, but they’re not magical unless you’re a magician. You got to know how the tricks work. The girl that gets cut in the face, I don’t really get cut in the face.
[00:29:59.100] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m totally I, 80% of me, totally agree with you, but I’m just trying to be the devil’s advocate here. But you could say that about all these tools, can’t you? Because we’re both very experienced. I just wonder I don’t know if you’re using any of them, but I do know where you’re. I think you’re saying you think it’s a little bit more with this particular solution.
[00:30:24.780] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think it’s overhyped. I think it is largely overhyped for what it would possibly do. Now, I got to put my pride in my back pocket, though, Jonathan. We are talking about the people, right? If we think about WordPress, 43 % of the internet started with them. Matt’s in charge of the thing. I mean, maybe they’re so far advanced. Maybe they know so much more than the rest of us because they’re so much further up the food chain than the rest of us are, that maybe this product really is that amazing, but I just don’t see the results of It’s okay.
[00:31:03.300] – Jonathan Denwood
I looked for- It’s okay.
[00:31:06.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
I looked for reviews on it that weren’t on the wordpress. Com website.
[00:31:11.880] – Jonathan Denwood
She’s on YouTube. She looked at Matt Madeja’s review. You missed it. Yeah, sorry.
[00:31:17.360] – Kurt von Ahnen
I just didn’t see a lot of glowing reviews. It wasn’t like, Oh, this changed my world. This was amazing. I think it does the job. I think it gives you a good, like I said for the other tools, gives you a good first draft, lets you get started. It’s just that when you’re in wordpress. Com and you’re building the sites that you and I focus on, some of the tools don’t get full functionality or you can’t load the plugin or whatever because you’re on wordpress. Com.
[00:31:44.360] – Jonathan Denwood
You’re limited by that. If you’re looking for… If you don’t need WP tonic, you’ve just got a box standard small business website. I just go with Cadence and maybe their hosted solution. Or Zip WP. I think both of them are much superior than wordpress. Com.
[00:32:07.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Cadence is interesting with having the Cadence Hosting option. Same for Elementor.
[00:32:14.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. There’s one thing you got to understand here, folks. If you’re going with one of these providers, I’m not sure if this applies to the cadence, but some of the ones that we are going to be talking about, I have some worries about if you ever want to leave their hosting and ever want to migrate the website, based on my research, you’re going to not have a very pleasant experience. But we’re going to be discussing that in a minute. But it is a concern of mine On to another one. I didn’t have a lot of time to actually look at it. Watched a couple of quick videos. It’s Bluehost solution. They do some very cheap hosting products, don’t they? But then they got the high performance. I don’t know exactly what high performance is. But even that, you got the pro at 13. These are month to month. You got pro 1395, premium 3199, advanced 34. That seems a very small jump, doesn’t it? Then you got elite at 48. You got full pricing. I don’t know. Have you had time to look at their AI offering at all, Kirk?
[00:33:49.680] – Kurt von Ahnen
Bluehost is one of those dichotomy kinds of businesses for me, Jonathan, in that, super, super cheap. So you could say super, super cheap, but they also come to market with jumps in technology sometimes. I say it, and sometimes people are surprised, but I was with Bluehost for 16 years. I hosted a ton of startup projects through Bluehost, and I found that they were great for running startup projects or trying new tools or different things because I wasn’t spending a bunch of money. I didn’t have a bunch of traffic or bandwidth on those sites. And I just really wanted to see how things worked. And in that frame set, that DIY perspective and how I train myself up in the industry, it was a great tool. And they have some of the best people. I love going to WordCamp and meeting the Bluehost people face to face. They have some of the friendliest, nicest people. Their support for me when I was a customer was actually pretty good. But there were things that when I came up against that wall where things didn’t work with Bluehost, it was like, it just doesn’t work with Bluehost. That’s not going to work.
[00:35:00.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
It wasn’t like solutions because the budget limited the ability. So that’s why I ended up leaving Bluehost over time. I found that when they bring something like an AI tool to the table, it’s generally been vetted pretty good internally, and they don’t give it to the public until it’s sharp, it’s clean, and it works.
[00:35:18.720] – Jonathan Denwood
I think of the budget solutions, they’re quasiment one of the best ones. People always used to about SiteGround and say as a budget solution, they were a lot… I think they’ve gone downhill quite a bit. They’re not so enamored with the WordPress freelances a subprofessional crew. But I think for a certain price point, Bluehost had been a reasonably decent solution. So I agree with you.
[00:36:03.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
What’s interesting is when they brag about their AI tools, it’s the opposite messaging of what you see on wordpress. Com. They just simply put in, Hey, we give you some AI-powered tools. And that to me makes me feel a lot more reasonable in the AI space. They have an AI builder, but I feel like it’s It’s more pitch to people like, Hey, you still got to come to the table and build this thing, but we’ve got some AI assistance for you here.
[00:36:37.820] – Jonathan Denwood
Whereas the marketing, the hype from the WordPress side is like, Hey, just give it one or two sentences and bada boom, bob’s your uncle, you got a website.
[00:36:47.430] – Kurt von Ahnen
That, to me, is just so far beyond reality.
[00:36:51.640] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it does do it. It was just that I’m talking about WordPress. Com. It does build a website. Matt, my dad, it was a plumbing website that he was sampling. It was okay, but to me, it was pretty rough as well. But it’s in the eye of the beholder as well, isn’t it? Yeah. Let’s go with the big daddy, GoDaddy and Aero. First of all, is it me or their website is a total effing mess? It’s the most confusing. They’ve got so many options, so many things they’re doing. I could make head of tail of it. Nothing says straightforward like a four-column design. They’ve got so many different services and things they’re doing. I had to hunt in the footer to find hosting WordPress or whatever they were doing. That’s my initial comment. Then they got this Aero thing, haven’t they? Which is their AI solution. Do you know anything about this?
[00:38:16.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’m going to sound pretty unprepared for this part of it because I don’t. I know that GoDaddy Forever was pushing their own web builder, like the GoDaddy website builder. I Honestly, and this is my own fault, I should have been better prepared, is Aero part of the website? Is it part of the GoDaddy web builder or is it an addition to WordPress? I really don’t even know myself.
[00:38:42.420] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I couldn’t get very effused about it, but I’m a well-known GoDaddy hater. They’re not going to ever be sponsoring this show or the other podcast we do anytime quick. I don’t blame them because I’m not a fan. I know. Basic starts at 799, Deluxe at 1099, and then the next one up is 1499, but at those prices, and I don’t know if it’s token-based. I couldn’t work out the to host if it’s token-based either, and I couldn’t really do that with wordpress. Com. It’s not that clear. I just can’t be bothered with that because I’ve got such bad experiences dealing with them and working with hosting from them that I just can’t be bothered.
[00:39:38.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
When I tried to find it on the website, I tried to figure out Because the GoDaddy website builder is 10 bucks a month, and then managed hosting for WordPress starts at $8 a month. But I tried to say, Okay, so where does Aero come in at?
[00:39:55.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Where’s-yeah, I could work it out. You’re brighter than me, so I was hoping that you could work it out.
[00:40:01.560] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it wasn’t there. I was like, because the description under Aero basically just says, Yeah, we bundle these nine essential business tools. I think to be legitimate, I tend to think it’s going to be with that website building platform, because if it’s WordPress, you have an unlimited number of tools. I don’t know what it is.
[00:40:23.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Right. On to the next one, 10web. 10web has had an interesting Hosting LLV career in WordPress. For a time, it was on AppSumma, and they were offering unlimited hosting deals, and that didn’t exactly pan out with them. Now, they’ve gone big into AI. I was quite confused with it, the interface and that, and then I looked at quite a few reviews, and then some of the problems reared their head about it. But initially, it seems one of the more superior offerings. Do you know anything about it and what’s your views on it?
[00:41:10.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I was really interested in how they did their AI, and it They really do their best to make it feel like you’re building in AI. They make it feel like you’re in a cloud window almost. I mean, it’s like you’re prompting and building the site as you go. I think for a lot of people, and based on something that up on my own personal radar just today, I think that there’s a market there for that. I think the way that they pitched it, the way that they funneled it, the way they make it, I think there’s a market for that in the space today. And this is new feelings for me based on something that happened today. But it doesn’t fit me. It doesn’t fit me at all. I’m more a hands on, like root WordPress person. I want to build this and here’s this section and that section.
[00:42:00.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, you’re going to be stuck with them if you ever want to migrate it. They also use a lot of third-party plugins to build the site. Some come from them, other from third parties. It’s all jumbled up. But the actual interface and how they do it, it’s one of the better worked out interfaces. But I have some major concerns with these people. The AI starter starts at 25, AI premium, 36, and they got an ultimate, but somewhere I’ve lost the price for the ultimate. I am impressed with the interface. There was quite a few reviews that said you were building it, and you lost everything. Everyone would go blank. Then if you run up their support, their support wasn’t very good support. I think that also shows up with God. But that’s the other thing that you said about Bluehost. You got reasonable support until you got into more complicated projects. But like GoDaddy and some other hosting providers in the cheap are, and then they’re notorious about their support, aren’t they? Some of the reviews I watched and read about 10Up weren’t that great, to be truthful. How true that is, I can’t say because I haven’t personally used them.
[00:43:49.700] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m just going what I read and watched.
[00:43:53.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, I like the interface. I definitely like the interface. I think what they built there functionally, I think it’s something that’s intuitive and that people can use pretty quickly. I get lost, and I know that this is going to make me sound silly, right? But let’s say I’m a business and I’m just building one site. Let’s say I’m a client. I could go with WP Thonic, I could go with Bluehost, so I’m open, right? I’m a business owner, and I get the 10web and I go, okay, let’s say I’m going to sign up and it’s going to be $18 a month for AI premium because I want a professional website, right? Because it says for simple websites or professional websites. So I take the most popular, 18 bucks a month. It’s going to renew for 36 bucks a month after that. But I’m still DIY, right? I’m still building this for 36 bucks a month, it’s not like I have other people helping me. I use AI, I build the thing. When I build the website, let’s say it’s a fairly static marketing website, do I still pay 36 dollars a a month after I built that thing out, or do I try to migrate it to some platform that’s seven dollars a month for hosting?
[00:45:07.280] – Kurt von Ahnen
And that’s where I get lost on all these-I think they must make it very difficult for you to move off, I would have thought, but I don’t know. I get lost. I’m going to build it with AI, well, then it’s built. So how long do I pay for the AI? Do I pay for the AI forever?
[00:45:26.140] – Jonathan Denwood
The other thing they were saying is that they’re using Using Alimator to build the actual page builder is Alimator. They said it’s been a bit buggy, the reviews I watched.
[00:45:44.820] – Kurt von Ahnen
It just depends on if there’s a major update or not.
[00:45:48.760] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly. On to the next one. I always struggled pronouncing these people Hostinger. Hostinger. How to pronounce it, please?
[00:45:57.350] – Kurt von Ahnen
Hostinger.
[00:45:58.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Hostinger. I’ve avoided these people like the play because premiums $2. 99i in business. How can you provide the support? It’s me saying this, but I think, Kirk, the amount of support that we offer at WP Tonic, it’s semi ridiculous, isn’t it?
[00:46:25.420] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. The amount of personalized response that we give that we help with screen shares and tutorials, it’s over the top.
[00:46:39.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Kirk said, I should put my prop, it’s such a competitive space. But it’s ridiculous amount of support. How on Earth can you provide any reasonable support and quality at 2. 99 at free? But let’s go on subject about the AI. Do you know anything about the AI at all?
[00:47:05.140] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. I was going to start out with the same thing that you had talked about. I realize it’s taboo to say these kinds of things. Maybe some people really get upset about it, but it’s so far below a standard for pricing that it’s too good to be true. Whatever it is, ain’t going to work right.
[00:47:28.340] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I But the only one that… But Bluehost, compared to a lot of these others, is not cheap. It’s medium road, isn’t it? But I’ve sampled GoDaddy. I haven’t hosted now. I haven’t sampled 10 web. I’m just going by online written and YouTube reviews, but I’ve sampled a lot of these cheaper. Like I say, SiteGround used to be pretty good, and then they went down. They went down rapidly, in my opinion. Obviously, these are my opinions, folks. There’s a certain price point that you just cannot provide the support and service level that a lot of people require, do they? You can’t do it, can you?
[00:48:25.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you go to a premium hosting company, you can host one website for $35 a month. You then ask, “Well, what comes with it?” What comes with this many PHP workers, this much in RAM, this much in whatever? And then you get to this plan, it says it’s 2. 99 a month, up to 25 websites, 25 GB storage. I’m like, wow, that’s crazy talk, right? And even if it renews at $11 a month after four years, it’s still like, wow, how in the world could it possibly be? It would have to be a lack of performance or a lack of support, or a lack of something. Something’s got a lack.
[00:49:08.420] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m going to split out the winners into two categories. Let’s start off with the web posting. I know that there’s overlap here. There is overlap, but I see those that offer page build as a separate plugin and those that just offer it as part of their hosting package. So let’s go with what we’ve dealt with in the second half. Well, I don’t think there are any great solutions in the second half. I think I would be the least worried about Bluehost. I was initially enamored with 10web because it’s a much slicker solution. But after watching and reading the reviews, like I say, I haven’t used it myself, so I am less enamored with it. But I suppose if they’ve sorted out some of the problems that have been pointed out. It’s a slick solution compared to almost all the others. But I just can’t at the present moment. What do you recommend?
[00:50:28.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
I thought the interface on 10Web was something I’d be tempted to give it a spin, to be honest with you, but from an agency perspective, I need something that I can use and flip to a client. Then that puts me back into where we started out the show, and that puts me on the Cadence or the Zip WP examples.
[00:50:50.190] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, where we’re getting there. In the second half, there’ll be people who just love Elementor AI, but I just think there are two clear winners. That’s Ashtal Zip WP or Cadence. I think you tend to, I don’t know, actually. I would say go with Cadence WPAI. If you were pushed, which one would you go with?
[00:51:24.740] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s really hard to say. I have access to both. I would say on the Nomas side of life, we’ve predominantly created ASTRO Pro sites with the ASTRO. And these are just for our startup clients. It’s not for all of our clients. I got to be really clear on the show. I’m not a startup template agency, right? But we have a buy-in product at a budget, and predominantly we use Aster and ZipWP to get those folks launched and to give them something that they can work with. On the WP tonic side, we predominantly use Cadence in this way. To me, they’re incredibly similar. I think I made it very clear on the show. They’re almost identical in the user cases. I actually think, considering just the site and what you’re seeing about the other tools that WP tonic puts in the package, for that use case, Cadence is definitely the way to go.
[00:52:22.600] – Jonathan Denwood
I was a bit dismissive of AI because I could see its benefit, but I didn’t think It was really much better than a good starter website. But then really, Kirk said, No, you’re not right. It actually does provide a lot of benefits. Then I looked at what Cadence was doing. To be fair, also Zip WP. I can see that a client would greatly benefit from these solutions. I personally think Cadence WP has done the best job of all the ones that I’ve seen. I honestly do believe that. And under Kirk’s influence, we’re going to be offering that solution, even though we developed some of our own starter websites, aimed at membership and community websites. But we’re going to offer both solutions and let people decide which one they prefer. But under your influence, you changed my mind on that. So, Kurt, what’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to, Kirek?
[00:53:40.200] – Kurt von Ahnen
To connect personally, it would be through LinkedIn. I check LinkedIn frequently, just make a connection, and we’ll communicate there. I’m the only Kurt von Ahnen on LinkedIn. That’s easy. For business, Manana Nomas. Manananomas. Com, X Manana Nomas, Facebook Manana Nomas. It’s all there.
[00:53:57.140] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. If you really want to support the podcast, the listeners, and those who watch us on the WP Tonic YouTube channel are growing. But if you really want to support the show, can you leave us a review on iTunes or Spotify? If you’re using the app on your phone to listen to this podcast, it’s really easy to leave a review on both platforms. It really does mean that new people have the opportunity to see the show, and both platforms promote us a lot more. I think that’s been happening because both shows that we do together have been growing recently. If you could do that, that would be fantastic. We will be back next week with another show to help you build a great membership or community-focused website, mostly on WordPress, but we cover marketing and some of the SaaS solutions as well. We try and provide some value. See you soon, folks. Bye.
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