Our Predictions For WordPress For 2026
Discover our WordPress 2026 predictions: AI integration, block editor evolution, and performance upgrades that will transform your website.
In this show, we dive deep into our predictions for WordPress in 2026. From emerging trends in website design to cutting-edge technologies shaping the platform, we discuss how these developments could redefine the WordPress experience. Join us as we explore the potential impact of AI, increased security measures, and the evolution of e-commerce.
This Week’s Sponsors
Kinta: Kinta
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
Rollback Pro: Rollback Pro
The Show’s Main Transcript
[00:00:01.940] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome. Let me switch off the email as well. A clear year. Right, so 3, 2, 1. Welcome back, folks, to the WP Tonic Show. This is episode 991. This is our first show of January, and it’s on January 1st. It shows how frustrated I am, and maybe I’ve influenced my co-host. But no, we had some spare time, so we thought we’d do a show. Here are our predictions for 2026: what we believe will happen in the WordPress space. So, Kirek, would you like to introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
[00:01:22.500] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, Jonathan. My name is Kurt von Ahnen. I own an agency called Manananomas, and we do a lot of work directly with WP Tonic.
[00:01:30.360] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s fantastic. As I mentioned, we’ll be making our predictions. We don’t guarantee that it will come true, but it’s just a bit of entertainment, folks. But before we go into this great show, I’ve got a message from one of our major sponsors. We will be back in a few moments, folks. And a very noisy car is going around the roundabout. Did you pick that up, actually?
[00:01:57.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, I did. Sounded good.
[00:01:58.840] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it sounded God. So three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we get into the meat and potatoes, I want to note that we have some great special offers from the sponsors, plus a curated list of the best WordPress technology and services for power users, freelancers, or small agency owners. You can get all these fabulous goodies by visiting wp-tonic. Com/deals. Wp-tonic. Com/deals. What more could you ask for, my beloved tribe? Probably a lot more, but that’s all you’re going to get on that page. So, Kirk, let’s go straight into it. My first prediction is WordPress. Org plugin directory is just going to face an avalanche, an avalanche of AI-assisted and generated plugins, and they’re going to have some problems dealing with this avalanche. I think there’s a need for reforms to the WordPress plugin directory, and those reforms have been in place for a number of years. I think this is bad, but it could also mean some fundamental changes to how the directory is organized-something I’ve wanted for quite a while. What do you think of this prediction, Kurt?
[00:03:41.100] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think it’s very similar to one of my predictions, and I agree with you. We may not agree on causation or outcomes, but I did see a similar pattern. I think many people will think it’s easy. A false sense of confidence will lure them in. And to your point, there’s going to be just a deluge of straightforward, quick action-type plugins that people are going to want to create and think, Oh, I solved this problem for myself. Surely, six million people want to give me five dollars each for this. And I don’t think that’s going to happen. I think the best way to expand on my prediction in that space is to see this whole thing backfiring in ’27 and ’28. I think by the time 2027- ’28, you mean 2028? Yeah, 2027, 2028.
[00:04:40.880] – Jonathan Denwood
I believe you mentioned 2007 and 2008.
[00:04:45.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, whatever I said.
[00:04:46.780] – Jonathan Denwood
I would never get my terms jumbled, would I?
[00:04:49.860] – Kurt von Ahnen
No. But I see 2026 being this free for. Everyone wants to add their content to the repository and take their shot at creating something. And then I see 2027 and 2028 as just a rebellion. People will not want these simple plugins. Users will become frustrated with the repository. They will realize they built something they can’t maintain. It’s a struggle. It’s this, it’s that. I think we’ll see this wave come in, followed by a giant wave of unsupported plugins over the next couple of years.
[00:05:30.000] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s difficult to predict, but I think I agree with you there. I think it will lead, because I’ve promoted for several years that, instead of this denial, we should embrace paid plugins. That is, one of the significant areas that generate revenue for the WordPress Express system for independent plugin developers is there. There’s a denial of it. That you have rules prohibiting you from promoting your commercial premier plugin in specific ways. I think it’s totally ridiculous. I think it should be embraced and made a subcategory of our premier plugins, which you know have been reviewed by someone on the directory team. It has the security stamp and meets coding standards. They’re charged; the Premier Plugin provider is charged because they receive all the benefits of a marketplace. We know people whom we are friends, and we also work with them. It’s been the main way they’ve built their business. They don’t have to deal with the dirty world of online marketing. Interesting, as the directory has marketed its product.
[00:07:18.300] – Jonathan Denwood
They’ve had to do a lot of additional work, I’m not denying it. But as you know, being in a marketplace, the only problem with a lot of SaaS-based marketplaces like Shopify and other ones is it has its downside. I know somebody that did really well in the Shopify add-on world, and then Shopify saw them doing too well. And then they said, Well, we’re going to do that product. We’re going to integrate it into our main product. And we’re also going to make sure that you can’t How can you sell yours on the marketplace. So they were forced to sell to Shopify. That’s not great. Until recently, most people thought they were totally protected from those type of shicanikings, didn’t they? What happened last year broke that a bit, didn’t it? But it has been an enormous benefit benefit for, as I said, we know people that basically built the whole business on a freedium, premier basis, don’t we?
[00:08:42.120] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, absolutely.
[00:08:45.080] – Jonathan Denwood
How do you want to approach this? Do you want to oscillate from one of mine to one of yours? Or should we go through mine first in the first half and then we do yours in the second half?
[00:08:55.190] – Kurt von Ahnen
Go back and forth. It doesn’t matter to me.
[00:08:57.740] – Jonathan Denwood
Do you want to go do your I’ll put it in one, two, three, four, your order. I think that’s the AI filtering, isn’t it?
[00:09:08.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, we could go with AI filtering. It’s interesting Because I do a lot of work with younger people, Jonathan, and I’m seeing this Gen Z generation. I’m seeing them really crave tactile experiences. Something I can’t wrap my head around, these younger people, they get excited when they get mail. If they send a postcard or if they receive something with a stamp, they actually get excited about it. And I go, I’m never happy to see the mail. All the mail is to me is bills and junk mail, right?
[00:09:47.440] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s bills or rates.
[00:09:49.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. Someone’s coming after me. So I’m never happy to see the mail. And where I’m extending with this is, as I think As I interact more and more with more and more circles outside of just keyboard warriors, more than just like agency type people, like the public, I’m seeing where AI filtering is going to grow in demand. All of our, not all, but a lot of our friends in the plugin space, in the IT space, they’re all trying to figure out how to leverage more AI to do more things, to do more. And there is a certain desire for AI. I’m not denying that, but I think there’s the other side of that pendulum where people are going to crave that human tactile analog experience, even in a digital space. And so I think people are going to search more and more non-AI content. For example, did you see on DuckDuckGo, if you search for images now, you can filter out AI images. And so I think there’s going to be more and more of a request for this and more and more of a tools-based opportunity in the coming year, 18 months, for people to create tools that will identify and filter out the AI.
[00:11:04.000] – Kurt von Ahnen
I think more and more people are going to crave that human experience over the AI. There’s a certain part of us that wants all the information all the time, but there’s another part of us that just wants that relationship.
[00:11:16.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I totally agree. Where that balance, where that line will be drawn, I think is totally up for debate. That line seems to change, oscillate constantly, doesn’t it? But I totally agree with you. On to one of mine. It’s really linked to number one. It’s a consequence. I think the plugin team are going to be inundated, and also just the barrier between custom coding and vibe coding, it’s all merging, isn’t it? There’s going to be a major security breach in the WordPress space, but also not only WordPress. I’m not… This is a 70% focused WordPress, 30% SaaS-based podcast. But I see it affecting SaaS as well to some extent, but obviously… But I can see a major security breach in some plugin because there’s plugins that That come on my radar that got 100,000, 200,000 installs, and I’ve never even heard of them. They’re not even on my radar. In the bigger scheme of things, that’s a drop in the bucket for the amount of people utilizing WordPress. But that’s still a major security problem, isn’t it? What do you reckon?
[00:12:55.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
It is. I still About six months ago, I read an article, a report, and it was like one of these official reports of statistics and blah, blah, blah. But it was talking about how if you use AI to code, it gives you bad code 23 % of the time. Out of that 23%, And out of that 23 %, much of it is sourced from like, malware sites and places like that because it’s finding the code somewhere. So it finds it, scrapes it somewhere and puts it on your table. And that to me, it falls in line with what you said. Someone creates something, they vibe code something, they’re not a developer, they really don’t know how to audit the output that they’re receiving, they push that code forward, someone misses it, and then you’ve got some security breach or some something that happens.
[00:13:46.480] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. So your next one is, WordPress will not lose ground, but I believe its growth will be moderate at best. What’s that about then, Kurt?
[00:13:56.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
I’ve had a lot of interesting thoughts about WordPress, and And this is such a… So people that haven’t listened before, if you haven’t already heard, I wasn’t part of the community in WordPress for 14, 15 years that I was working with it. I built an agency, I had hundreds of clients, I did all these things, but I was never part of the community. Then I went to WordCamp in San Diego, 2018, changed 2018 or 2020. God, I can’t remember. It’s ’21 or ’22, right? We went to San Diego. That’s when I basically started this community thing. And I started getting really involved with the community, like volunteering at word camps and running the WordPress meetup and all those things. So I’ve seen from both sides of the table very directly. And there’s people that are in the inner circle in the community at WordPress, and they doomsday this whole thing over. Matt can be a little multi-personality, right? They don’t know what Matt is going to wake up in the morning, right? And they seem to ebb and flow on Matt’s emotions up and down. And if you’re not paying attention or if you are paying attention to that, might think, oh, this thing is spiraling out of control.
[00:15:15.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s going to go down the toilet. And then you see people say, oh, we’re going to lose market share. And then someone else goes, we’re 43 % of the Internet. And so it goes, that’s a lie. It’s just this back and forth thing. But I think in reality, Jonathan, again, seeing it from the position of before I was in the community, what did I think? Great platform, solid CMS. Security has come a long, long way since everybody complained about it 15, 20 years ago. I mean, it is as far as I’m concerned, the opportunity with the plugins, the function, the flexibility, the ownership, nothing comes close to what WordPress is delivering in that way. And without going too far the different directions inside of WordPress, but just talking about WordPress in general, I think it’s not going to lose ground. It’s not going to lose market share, but I see more of a maturing of the people that are the users, a maturing of the agency types, a maturing of the users, rather than an onslaught of a bunch of new users that are inexperienced.
[00:16:22.980] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think it’s really interesting. It merges into my next point. But I also, before we go into point My point three, my prediction, number three prediction, which is linked to your one, is, yeah, it might be driving for… I’m just stating the obvious, but I haven’t heard most people state this, is that the growth has been in the Indian subcontinent, has been in the Southern area, has been not in North America. The growth has been in Malaysia, the growth has been in India, the growth has been in Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Gulf States. It’s not been in Western Europe, and it’s definitely not been in North America. I might be totally wrong. I haven’t got the data. It’s just my incarnation. The growth has been zero in North America. It hasn’t been losing traction as much as I thought because it’s just facing an avalanche. A lot of attention is based on Squarespace and on Wix. But when you look at their market share, it’s my new, what has affected WordPress is literally Every integrated vertical industry has some form of CRM, has some integrated website builder and marketing tool. Every industry, every sub-industry vertical, not only one or two, but half a dozen SaaS-based platforms, which used to be the total territory of WordPress.
[00:18:08.120] – Jonathan Denwood
I haven’t heard many people discuss that in the podcast, WordPress space, really, but it’s been pretty obvious to me that’s been going on, is it’s a death of a thousand cuts in the North American. But that doesn’t mean there’s an enormous… When it comes to customization, it used to be a cost barrier. That’s one of the good things about what we’re seeing in AI coding or assisted. I think a better way of seeing it is assisted AI coding, where the cost barrier of true customization will go down considerably, and it’d be offered the to customize a solution to the client’s real needs. But the problem is a lot of clients don’t even know what their needs are, or they want too much customisation. They’re not prepared to change their internal systems, and they want a totally customized, which has its own problems, doesn’t it? That’s linked to my prediction number 3. We’ll get a clearer picture of the question is WordPress and its ability to be a true headless CMS. Will that really meet what AI really wants? Because I’m not an expert on AI, but I listen to a lot of AI podcasts too much.
[00:19:52.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Some of the people I listen to, I’ve checked them over and they got a credible history in software and AI expertise. Every person that I keep on my pod list and I regularly listen to, I check them over. Do they have any credibility? Do they have any real knowledge in the subject? Because there are a lot of charlatans out there, especially in podcasting and on YouTube. Almost the ones that I listen to, Kirk, say that they I use this term of primitives, that AI wants flat data. It doesn’t like wall garden data. That’s what a successful SaaS wants. It doesn’t want data that would be transportable. You see that in the NMS space, in the membership space, Kajabi doesn’t make its data accessible. It makes it accessible by a limited API, but it’s limited. It gives you no ability to export the data. So a lot of CMSes, the data is walled gardened, I said, to a certain degree. They might have a API. But what AI wants, it wants flat data, it wants primitives, it wants data to be accessible. That’s the best terms I can put it. Is this making sense, Kurt?
[00:21:34.130] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. I wonder if it’s making sense to the average listener.
[00:21:37.860] – Jonathan Denwood
This is aimed at WordPress freelancers.
[00:21:42.480] – Kurt von Ahnen
We need to think of it this way: you’re describing SaaS as keeping its data hidden behind layers that AI can’t naturally access, whereas WordPress is a little more open.
[00:21:54.560] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, it’s an open-source quasar. This will lead to an enormous debate in 2025. Is it truly an open source platform? I always thought it was a semi-open. I never treated it as a fully open-source platform, not about the data, but about how it was internally managed. But in technical terms, it’s a much more open platform than any priority run SaaS-based system. In the world of what I call… This is the term I created myself. I don’t know. I call it flat data. I call it flat data. That AI wants flat data. It wants accessible, flat data. All right? All right. How are we doing on time? To go on to the next one on your list. Where did we lose ground?
[00:22:59.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
Plug in developers with sweets.
[00:23:01.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, so on your other prediction podcast that you did with Matt Marenway and Matt…
[00:23:08.800] – Kurt von Ahnen
Matt Madeas.
[00:23:10.000] – Jonathan Denwood
You mentioned this. So what’s your thoughts about this?
[00:23:15.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Well, if you’ve listened to anything with Jonathan and I, you know that we’re definitely in the WP Manage Ninja’s tent, right? We have Fluent CRM.
[00:23:25.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Never, never. I don’t like Jules at all.
[00:23:28.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
Fluent CRM, Fluent CART, Fluent Form, Fluent SMTP. I personally, when I’m running my agency, I like to use these types of plugin suites. I like the inference that things are going to work well together. When I’m building things for clients, I want them to be consistent, reliable, and I don’t want to have weird connections to things or have to depend on a WP Fusion connection or depend on a WP automator to make something happen. So if I can integrate my CRM with my LMS with my form tool, and I know that those things natively behave very well together, I like going that route. I do. However, I also see the other side of this. I think you’re noticing I’m very much in a teeter totter mindset today. It’s convenient. I like it. I think it’s more stable. I love the products from Fluent. I was talking to Adam with SureCart and Sure members, and I was talking to him a week or two ago and expressing the same thing. They’ve got a new CRM coming out. So they’ve got a CRM coming out. They’ve got a community tool. They’ve got that same garden approach. But then we come across that idea that you float a lot, Jonathan, and that’s that walled garden idea.
[00:24:58.060] – Kurt von Ahnen
It’s like when you build your house all on that one thing, that one brand, you get locked in.
[00:25:04.870] – Jonathan Denwood
Can I slightly interrupt? I would never do that, would I? But I’ve got better, haven’t I? It’s tricky. But I think Sure, I think that’s one of the things, and Fluent, and also WP Funnel.
[00:25:24.520] – Kurt von Ahnen
Wp Funnelz with Creator LMS, great tools.
[00:25:27.360] – Jonathan Denwood
With their mint. It’s It’s WP Funnelz, and it’s fluent that I’ve hitched my wagon to a certain degree, but I’ve also bought a lot of licenses. I spent a lot of money buying lifetime license. I decided not to go down the boot lag route. I don’t care certain individuals that we know, so it’s totally legal. Well, it might be totally legal, but it’s still morally bankrupt, in my opinion. It’s what you use. I chose to go the morally high ground and buy the license and do special deals for my custom hosting offering. It cost me a fair bit of money to buy all those lifetime licenses, about $20,000. But where was it going? Is this wall garden? It’s a tricky one. I I think Sure and Fluent and WP Funnel have done it in a way that it gives you benefits, but they haven’t pushed it to a total wall garden. I think Alimator have pushed it, and there’s been, in some ways, a couple other providers that, a few years ago, were brought up by those I will not comment on because I will get a legal letter if I do, have been brought up.
[00:27:09.740] – Jonathan Denwood
I might as well go for it, Thrive Themes bought, but they weren’t offering a hosting, but you had to buy. That’s one of the things when I was listening to your other podcast, You Traitor, Kirk. They insisted that you said, Why doesn’t Fluent provide a universal offering that you can buy all the plugins? It’s attractive, but it’s what Thrive Themes did. But they only But offering a bundle product, but they offered a bundle product, and then they wouldn’t offer the individual plugin separately. Oh, yeah. So you You were forced into the wall garden. Now, when you add the hosting to the wall garden, and we are going to be talking about this with another company on my list, then it becomes a true wall garden. It becomes a quasar SaaS product. You can install other plugins, but it’s tricky. It’s finding that balance, and nobody in the WordPress space, because at a time, a lot of the leaders in the WordPress community community, the influencers, thought that WordPress could become a SaaS, and you had all these SaaS offerings. But it never gelled with people. It never got the traction people were getting It’s a full fault.
[00:28:46.980] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, there’s so many times that you’ll be talking to somebody and they’ll say, Oh, I’m just going to multisite that and then offer it as a SaaS. And it makes sense when it comes out of their face, and it made sense when it came out of my face in the past. But none of those real multisite SaaS offerings that I was a part of in the past, none of them ever got traction. None of them ever really took off.
[00:29:11.060] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I was thinking of it, but then I Part of my oscillation, it’s all based, I think, based on my oscillation, as I call it. That’s what I call it. You call it madness, don’t you, Kurt? Is around the feelings of… Because when When I originally started WP Tonic and I had my vision, I thought it was going to be a WordPress-based SaaS. But it just doesn’t work, Kerr. Why it doesn’t work? I haven’t really spent the mental energy to really think out why it doesn’t work, but it doesn’t.
[00:29:54.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, there’s a lot of it has to do with just the basic mentality, the break in it. People sign up for a SaaS platform, and when they get what they get, they just deal with it. You know what I mean? I’ve seen people buy in the Kajabi and go, Oh, I guess that’s the way that looks. Okay, I’ll just put my logo on the left instead of the right this time. They just adjust. But as soon as they get into the WordPress space and they hear any inkling that it’s flexible and customizable, the gloves come off and the SaaS offers out the window. Now they want everything to be customer-set up their way or what they envision their way is. It’s really hard to have a cookie cutter example.
[00:30:35.720] – Jonathan Denwood
I think with WP Tonic, with your help, we’ve found a reasonably… It’s taken a while.
[00:30:41.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
A great compromise.
[00:30:42.880] – Jonathan Denwood
But we’ve found a happy medium, and we know how to deal with certain customer sets, where we have to put a fence up, and where those breakpoints are. But that took a while with your help to get there because it’s tricky.
[00:31:03.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah, it sure is.
[00:31:05.860] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it’s a good place to… I think we’ve had a great discussion. I think there’s a load of meat in this first episode.
[00:31:14.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
We even had a comment, so I’m excited.
[00:31:16.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, we even had a comment, haven’t we? We’re going to go for our break, folks. When we come back, we got some other great predictions. I’ve got some spicy ones. We will be back in a few moments, folks. Three, two, one. We’re coming back, folks. Before we go into the second half, I just want to point out, if you’re a WordPress professional and you’re looking for great hosting, why don’t you look at becoming a partner with WP Tonic? We specialize in woocommers, in membership and community websites. We offer the best WordPress technology, so use it as a You don’t have to get into arguments with your clients about who buys the technology. You can get it all from one source, i. E. From WP Tonic. None of the technology we provide is bootlegged. It’s all licensed, unlike some other providers that will not be mentioned. All our plugins technology that we supply in one unified package comes from us fully licensed. Plus, you have access to our great team. Kirk is part of the team. We’ve got a great small team, and we’re much more than a hosting provider. You can find more. Also, have I mentioned, we’ve got some great financial packages for you to become a partner.
[00:32:47.980] – Jonathan Denwood
You can find more by going over to Wp-tonic. Com/partners. Wp-tonic. Com/partners. Let’s build something special together. Right. What do you mean? I thought that was pretty good, wasn’t it? There we go. I’m looking, is this nice finse about Matt Bidaia, a speech like, You’re not so generous with me. Let’s move on. Stella WP. In my opinion, they’re going to break up. The model hasn’t worked. The individual, Chris Lema, that was part of Stela W. I’m not even sure Stella. It was Liquid Web when Chris joined. He’s the one that thought up buying all these plugins and offering them in one package and building a quasar. Not quite what FriFem’s did, but It hasn’t worked out. It will never work out, in my opinion. I think the people that own Liquid Web… I think Liquid Web is doing quite well because it’s in the pure Enterprise-level hosting space. I think WordPress has lost interest for them, and I don’t see that still. They got bought out by venture capital. They’ve cut back, they’ve lost interest. It’s going to be broken up, and the various parts of the plugin is going to be sold on the open market.
[00:34:40.520] – Jonathan Denwood
I see this happening in 2026 myself. Might be totally wrong, but that’s my honest opinion. Kurt, what do you reckon?
[00:34:48.600] – Kurt von Ahnen
What do you reckon? It’s actually a very difficult topic to talk about, Jonathan. A lot of the really great people I met through the word camp process, getting Ben, the developer of Cadence, fantastic individual, fantastic developer.
[00:35:08.050] – Jonathan Denwood
Devon, who’s moved on to Automatic, that was Mark. They had some great people. It’s all gone That, South, it’s all gone sour.
[00:35:16.830] – Kurt von Ahnen
Carmen used to be on their LearnDash program, and then we just interviewed the guy that did LearnDash with James, right? Yeah, James.
[00:35:26.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I really like James. Not sure if James likes me after my last comment on one of his videos, but I do like… He’s got an interesting style, James, hasn’t he?
[00:35:35.340] – Kurt von Ahnen
And I like James. He’s smart. He’s smart and he’s doing good things with Edge. I really struggle with the whole thing, and I feel like, just on a personal note, I’m in so deep with Lifter LMS that it’s hard to comment on Learndash and not sound like I got my hand in the cookie jar, right? Yeah. But the thing that I’ve said-I think you’ve been very fair to be truthful. Yeah, the thing that I’ve said publicly and that I feel safe repeating is, I’m on a team with Lifter and they’re releasing new things all the time. They just did a soft launch of a gift feature last week or two weeks ago. Now, if that would have come out before Christmas, that would have been great. But it came out right at Christmas. They did the continuing education. They revamped the groups program. They revamped social learning. There’s constantly development happening and new features and a freshness coming in that space. And what I always considered to be the biggest competition was LearnDash. And with WP Tonic and the work that we’ve done, Jonathan, we’ve got LearnDash clients. I’ve got LearnDash clients through Mañana No Mas.
[00:36:47.300] – Kurt von Ahnen
I still have that experience of working in- I’m really amnoxic.
[00:36:51.000] – Jonathan Denwood
I like Lifter, I like Chris, I like what Chris and the other partners have done. I I like Creator LMS. I think they could get some traction. They were kind to offer me a lifetime deal. It’s a great product. I think the problem with LearnDash was this need for external plugin.
[00:37:17.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
They had the opportunity to develop and to continue and- Well, they did, but they decided to develop another external, which they owned.
[00:37:28.380] – Jonathan Denwood
It was still a as I was concerned. But I think that was done because they had business arrangements with other membership plugins, and it all got a bit murky and difficult. But I know nothing I’m not being… I’m just surmising that. I’m not being told anything. But I don’t believe that the business model… I don’t know this for a fact. I might be incorrect. It’s only my opinion. But when Chris Lema was part, had big influence with them. This was his vision, and it just hasn’t… And some visions work out, and some visions don’t work out, and this vision hasn’t worked out. It never will, in my opinion. I won’t be totally wrong. It’s just my opinion. It never will work.
[00:38:22.400] – Kurt von Ahnen
When you got venture capitalism, a lack of development, and a breadcrumb trail of layoffs over the last year, it makes it real hard to be positive in your thoughts about momentum going forward.
[00:38:34.940] – Jonathan Denwood
In my opinion, the various plug-ins will be sold off in 2026. But I might be totally wrong. They’ll probably announced next week that they’re investing 20 million into the business. And that show what idiot I am. There we go. On to your next one. What’s your next one?
[00:38:53.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
Oh, my goodness. I have that the cost of premium hosting will increase.
[00:39:01.080] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, it just depends what you think premium hosting means, doesn’t it? That managed hosting, it means nothing. It means everything and nothing. Managed hosting, that’s interesting. You use the term premium rather than managed, isn’t it? I presume you did that on purpose.
[00:39:23.640] – Kurt von Ahnen
I did.
[00:39:24.360] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes. Sorry, I interrupted a little bit.
[00:39:26.920] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, it’s fine. Between two different factors, there’s two different factors at play here the way that I’m seeing this. One is that this AI quagmire of nonsense that the whole planet seems to be wrapped up in is everybody- It’s not nonsense, but it is nonsense.
[00:39:46.690] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s the tricky point, isn’t it? There is substance. I use a lot of AI. It’s been very helpful for me. I wish it had turned up 10 years ago, but it is what it is. I still think I’ve got another 10 years before I go, my brains go to utter jelly. I just want to leave. I want to go out big and think that I did the best, but it’s been very helpful for me, and it’s definitely more than just a con. But I think you’re talking about the total drifter class that have pounced on this to even a to a larger extent than crypto. It was bad with crypto. It was bad with crypto. But this drifter class, they have hit this hard, haven’t they?
[00:40:42.620] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. And they’re going to use it as an excuse to It has rung up the prices. The other side of why I say the cost of premium hosting will increase is just in our own experience. And I’m being very transparent here. For New Year’s, we’ve increased our rates at Mañana Nomas. And But news flash, we’re not as cheap as WP Tonic. So if you want a bargain, you go over to WP Tonic.
[00:41:10.080] – Jonathan Denwood
I have increased them, but I have increased. I did listen. Kirk was saying, You’ve got to- You’ve got to increase your prices. I just done it in a quasar. That’s a way, didn’t I?
[00:41:23.840] – Kurt von Ahnen
There is such a difference between someone that wants to have a blog as a hobby and somebody that thinks they’re an entrepreneur that wants to project manage their own website enterprise. And these people have become ever more demanding, and those demands incur labor costs. And as you well know, when you’re in business, if you suffer a labor cost, you need to push that along somewhere with a margin. There’s got to be profit on the other side of the cost. And so I think a lot of the people that supply decent support with premium with premium hosting and with these different AI options and all these things, the complications, the extra bandwidth that some people are using when they’re vibe coding all their junk, I think the hosts are going to seize the opportunity to raise the prices.
[00:42:16.500] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, yeah. I’m going to mention them because both these companies are never going to sponsor my show. Godaddy, Bluehost, SiteGround, There’s a host of them. They’ve done WordPress so much damage by offering, jamming as many websites in their shared hosting as possible, offering awful support for Bluehost, of them is one of the better ones in a strange way. They’re just free names, but there’s a whole host of these lower-quality WordPress hosting providers out there, and they’ve caused WordPress a lot of damage. But on the other hand, the market… It’s like they say, in finance, you never go against the Fed, because if you do, you’re not going to be around very long. Don’t go against the market because you’re going to blow a lot of money and you’re going to go bankrupt. So That’s what the market wanted. That’s the message that you could have your site run on $5 a month and you get fantastic support and it’d be the best quality I’m still there, this, that, and the other. And it’s just nonsense. But that’s what the market wants, doesn’t it?
[00:43:55.250] – Kurt von Ahnen
That’s what the market wanted. And you know what? While While it’s almost humorous sometimes to poke fun at the five dollar a month providers that are out there, Bluehost rises right to the top in that conversation. But there’s Bluehost and Hostinger and a couple of others. I was on Bluehost for 16 years As an agency before I moved- You were pretty happy, weren’t you? I was pretty what? Happy?
[00:44:21.520] – Jonathan Denwood
Happy.
[00:44:22.440] – Kurt von Ahnen
Yeah. To me, their customer service was great. And you’ve seen me work. I’m a fairly independent person. I try to research my own answers, and I only bother support if I really, really need to. And when I had to call them or get on chat with them, it was great service. It really was. But the truth of the matter was, as our projects grew and we dealt with more enterprise-level projects, we had to get into a more capable hosting environment. That was just the simple truth of it.
[00:44:53.880] – Jonathan Denwood
All right. Let’s go on to even more spy. It’s you, isn’t it? I’ve had what? Let’s start here. Your next one. What’s your next one? The next one?
[00:45:01.700] – Kurt von Ahnen
We just did the cost of premium hosting is going to increase.
[00:45:04.440] – Jonathan Denwood
Oh, yeah, it’s me then. Yeah, sorry. Well, let’s go on to this thing, really spicy. Silver Lake will sell WP engine to Automatic in 2026. I’m just going to give you my logic to this. If you take out… Obviously, you got the emotional side. Some of the partners of Silver Lake, to say, and Matt Mowenweg, and some of the partners of Silver Lake, to say they don’t like one another would be the understatement of the century. But take out the emotional part of it. I just don’t think for Automatic and for Mahrerweg, it was acceptable for an outside company to do an IPO. It’s just not acceptable to Automatic and to the founder, and I understand it. If anybody’s going to have an IPO in the WordPress space, it’s going to be automatic. I think the joint founder of WordPress, that’s a line which she’s not prepared. I want to point out, I have no inside knowledge of this in any shape or form, but I think for Matt, it is not acceptable for a company WP engine to go IPO and to make $100 million plus out of something that he started with a joint founder, but then grew to what it is.
[00:46:44.050] – Jonathan Denwood
If anybody’s going to have IPO in his mind, it’s going to be automatic. Silver Lake, it’s not about… Even though I’ve heard that a couple of the partners are absolutely I absolutely detest MacMill Weg with a passion. It’s business. They’re there to make money. They bought it because they thought they can’t. Unless this gets settled and it Through the court system, it will drag on for years. It’s not going to be settled. 2026 is going to be a hot year for IPOs. Elon Musk is going to, with SpaceX, he’s going to go public, and it’s going to be a hot year for the IPO market. With this case, Silver Lake can’t go IPO, and that’s why they bought their stake in it. Now, to settle this matter for it not to go through the courts, in my opinion, I think Matt Mareweg, with his Venture supporters, he can get the money to buy it. It will be huggled. But I see Matt and automatic buying WP engine. What do you think of my logic, Kurt?
[00:48:14.660] – Kurt von Ahnen
I wouldn’t take it off the table. I certainly wouldn’t. On one hand, people new to the WordPress space assume that WordPress is WordPress and everything else is something else. Then we’ve all learned over the last few years, the Automatic is- This is my…
[00:48:32.000] – Jonathan Denwood
Matt’s attitude is, This is my garden. I invested most of my life in this. You wouldn’t have a garden to play in unless I had built this up. If you’re not prepared to give me what I want. You’re not playing in this garden, end of story. You might not like that. You might say, That’s not right. But far as what I’ve seen, that’s the reality of the situation. If you want to play in the garden, you play by my rules or you’re out. Silver Lake, they might have army of lawyers, but so does Automatic. Matt’s got some big supporters, financial supporters, and I just got the impression that if you’re going to go… I don’t think he’s got a lot of love for Alimator either, but they’re Israeli-based company They got private equity. I think their days are numbered as well. I think they got a little bit arrogant in their attitude and practices as well, and they peeved off a lot of people using their product. I think their days are over to some extent. They’re all going to make a ton of money, don’t worry. They’re going to sell it off as well.
[00:50:00.000] – Jonathan Denwood
In my opinion. But when it comes to WP engine, I think Matt’s made it clear it’s not on if you’re going to go the IPO route. The only people that are going to go the IPA route is automatic, and that’s the end of the story. Could be. So let’s go to your last one because we’ve got time.
[00:50:27.080] – Kurt von Ahnen
You sure did frame it Well, you framed it really well, right? This is what Matt’s going to put up with, and don’t be arrogant, and don’t mess up the garden or the sandbox. And then Kevin Geary comes along with Etch and releases Etch. Now, I was super, super clear. I am one of the Etch early adopters. He got my money before I even saw a working example of anything.
[00:50:51.920] – Jonathan Denwood
He didn’t get mine.
[00:50:53.720] – Kurt von Ahnen
No, no. And I guess I’ll make the announcement here, right? I haven’t done it on a podcast yet. We just re-released the Mañana No Mas website over Christmas weekend in Etch. So it’s built in Etch. It’s not the prettiest website I’ve ever made, but that wasn’t the point. The point was: could I create something functional and efficient in Etch? My page speed went from a 64 in bricks to an 87 in Etch, which was the real telltale sign of what I was looking for. Will I build more efficiently? Do you have higher-performing websites on this platform? And I think the answer is yes. The way Etch is being released and presented to the community represents a fundamental shift in how you build sites in WordPress compared to other page builders. And I really see this as, I see it as, again, a totter moment, right? It’s super. It’s encouraging to see this growth, change, transition, and metamorphosis of talent in the WordPress space. That part’s great, but I feel like it’s going to drive a wedge between these communities.
[00:52:13.850] – Jonathan Denwood
There will be the owner; I think Edge is a fantastic product. I believe Kevin Geary has done a tremendous… But there are two sides to Kevin, aren’t there? He’s not someone I particularly like engaging with because I find him arrogant, patronizing, and rude. He’s personally attacked me for my political views, which I’ve never attacked him for. He has personally attacked me for my honest opinion that he is a troll. He is a terrible troll of mega proportions in the workplace. Fantastic marketer, does it, in my opinion, He trolls people to get them going, and that benefits him, and it benefits… But it’s also the tribe that follows him. They want him because they are very frustrated with Gutenberg and its implementation. There are a lot of people in the power freelance small agency space that I totally despise Gutenberg. I think a lot of that was mishandled by Automatic and by Matt as well. I think it was handled poorly. Stating the obvious in Kevin’s great terms. I believe he described me as a whingeing Pommy bee, something. Well, that was said using different words, but he said, I thought that was hilarious coming from Kevin, because everything that comes out of his mouth is negative.
[00:54:12.440] – Jonathan Denwood
But there is truth to a lot of his statements. It’s just the volume. But I think his tribe really likes what he says because they got totally fed up with the direction, the way… And a lot of their frustration is based on truth, even though I’ve been enhancing Gutenberg through Cadence, Generate Press, or other libraries out there, because you just have to accept what it is. The market makes the decision. But there are a lot of freelancers; they dislike Gutenberg for understandable reasons, don’t they?
[00:54:59.460] – Kurt von Ahnen
But my point is, if you look at Divi, I think it is another one of these in the WordPress ecosystem, right? It’s like a totally different tangent. So you go down the Divi line. Divi doesn’t make much noise in the space. They have a really loyal following. It’s not my bag of tea. Divi is not my cup of tea at all, but there are a lot of people that are in that tribe that love it, who are loyal, who are going to stick thick and thin. They love it. But Divvy wasn’t loud and boisterous about it the way.
[00:55:35.020] – Jonathan Denwood
The founder is totally different from Kevin. I think Kevin does it because his tribe prefers it. It generates more sales. I think Kevin is a competent businessman and a significantly better marketer than I am, but he’s driven by data, in my opinion. And that’s what his tribe wants to hear. Because they hate, they hate Gutenberg. I understand. I’ve said, I’ve tried not to be negative, I’ve wanted to be constructive. I think it’s improved significantly, Gutenberg. I think this whole idea of you having to adapt, react, and all the rest for this smaller agency, which is the power base of WordPress, was never going to fly. It was never going to fly. It still hasn’t flown with them. They know PHP, CSS, HTML5, a bit of JavaScript, and React. For the type of websites they’re building for the small, medium market, it’s just a pain in the ass, Gutenberg, for these people. It really is a pain in the ass. And Kevin saw it, and it’s… Yeah, am I making any sense? You are.
[00:57:09.320] – Kurt von Ahnen
I want to be super clear. Love the product. The results I’ve gotten on my own side have been phenomenal. I look forward to doing more going forward. I worry from the community perspective that it’s a big enough change and it’s a boisterous and loud enough, and I hate to say the word negative, but it’s like a- Well, that last thing from Kevin when he went after Ollie. Is it Ollie? McCallister, yeah.
[00:57:37.520] – Jonathan Denwood
That was ridiculous. I mean, that was ridiculous. I believe that was mind-numbing. He’s childish, from Kevin. But he won’t listen to anybody, and he doesn’t want any feedback or any show performance. I made it clear through my public comments that I knew what he was doing, in my opinion. He was trying to get me going. You’re not going to do it, Kevin. I’m not going to work. I commented a couple of times, so that’s it. But I wish him well. It’s a great product. I understand why those who use it are so passionate about it because they got… I only need to mention that there are developers; I only ask Gutenberg, and they proceed with it. Ten minutes later, I’m still listening to why they hate it so much. Well, Kirk, I think this has been an interesting show, hasn’t it? What’s the best way for people to find out more about you and what you’re up to?
[00:58:50.040] – Kurt von Ahnen
The Manana Nomas website was recently released in Etch. So manananomas. Com or LinkedIn. Kirk von Ahnen on LinkedIn, I’m easy to find.
[00:58:59.720] – Jonathan Denwood
And If you want to support the show, folks, what’s the best way to do it? We have grown in 2025. My downloads have increased significantly. We hope to secure strong sponsors for 2026. If you’re looking to sponsor your WordPress plugin shop or hosting provider, why don’t you reach out to me? Also, if you really want to support the show, what’s the best way? Go to the WP Tonic YouTube channel and subscribe to the channel. That would really help. Or if you’re listening on your phone, on Spotify or iTunes, leave a review. That’s the best way to support the show in 2026. I think we’ve got some great interviews coming up in the next two months. It should be an excellent year for WP Tonic and the podcast. We’ll see you soon, folks. Bye.
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