People have made some very impressive business successes by offering non-free plugins and plugins that are extensions to other plugins that are big enough to have extensions of their own (WooCommerce being the primary example). But I think it’s increasingly unlikely that this is a good way to launch a successful business.
[Since originally writing this, it’s also occurred to me that the agency approach to making a living in the WordPress space may also be living on borrowed time. That’s because high-end website owners and their agencies may opt to avoid the perceived risk of WordPress coming unglued and may in any case prefer different architectures while, at the same time, lower-end sites (blogs for authors and the like) are increasingly very well served by “drag and drop” sorts of offerings. I’m thinking of website builder SaaS offerings, certainly, but also platforms like Substack and Patreon. If my goal was to create a subscription newsletter, I wouldn’t presently choose a WordPress site if I wasn’t already very familiar with WordPress.]
I’m thinking primarily of bootstrapped businesses, but I also suspect that bootstrapped startups may be all there is in the WordPress space, at least for a while, because Matt Mullenweg’s takeover of Advanced Custom Fields (and his subsequent takeover of parts of the premium version of ACF) has, I’d imagine, significantly cooled the enthusiasm of venture capital investors for premium plugins.
In the bootstrap world, there’s probably less reason to fear that some Matt out there will steal your goodies, but that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t. The ACF heist was a poignant reminder that you really don’t own your own code in the world of open source (which, come on, was the whole point of open source in the first place, so don’t act shocked).
As I write this, there’s more of a serious movement afoot to revise WordPress governance so that it’s more of a community driven project (instead of a one-guy project that has a huge community). But who knows how that will play out.
SaaS as a solution
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, one approach that protects whatever secret sauce you bring to the meal is keeping the sauce on the server side of a SaaS offering. For a lot of plugin builders, the trick will be simply not to package the plugin as a plugin.
But I think there’s another issue, and I even think it’s one of the inherent strengths of open source as a concept: over time, free versions of things get better and better. You may have a feature-laden free version and a whole bunch of great goodies to hold in reserve for the premium version, but over time you’ve going to see other developers make competing products that offer some of your premium features for free.
Freemium limps along
I don’t mean to say this kills the freemium model, only that the tendency is toward making the premium side of the equation less valuable over time. Given that pricing in the WordPress ecosystem is arguably too low, this seems likely to make would-be entrepreneurs not exactly thrilled to jump in with both feet.
This is too bad, because there’s nothing quite like the WordPress plugin ecosystem (or the theme system, for that matter) out there in the software world, and it’s offered a way for a lot of smaller businesses to get a foothold and make a go of it. Not to mention creating ways to create all sorts of non-business blogs and the like.
But I think this shrinking premium benefit phenomenon is inherent in current-day WordPress and open source. There’s less and less incentive to spend a year rolling out a paid plugin. If you win, you don’t necessarily win much, your potential winnings aren’t secure, and competition from free alternatives is going to slowly erode your niche.
Will the wolf survive?
So do people like me stick with WordPress? Well, if we’re specifically looking at my case, then yes. I stay in WordPress, trying to leverage opportunities that take advantage of the platform’s enormous market share without getting bitten by the current growing risks to WordPress business.
(I will say I’m tempted to just switch up and go full time on whatever Joost and company wind up concocting–but that too will be WordPress in some form or fashion.)
I’ve got to believe that when a framework on the Internet has 40% market share, there’s still lots of opportunity to supply things people need, even if it’s a smooth, easily understood offramp from WordPress.
All that said, though, I’m still inclined answer the question I started with–is the plugin business played out?–by conceding that, yes, it may well be.