WordPress has two faces. Two different sides. Two different worlds, even. At least, that’s what I see when I look at the ecosystem today. On one side, there’s the community: passionate open-source contributors, event organizers, people advocating for diversity and inclusion, and those who genuinely believe in the mission of democratizing publishing. These people build WordPress, maintain it, translate it, test it, document it, and help others learn it.
On the other hand, businesses of all sizes generate revenue using or around WordPress. These include plugin and theme developers, agencies, hosting providers, SaaS platforms, and marketplaces. For them, WordPress is a tool that they monetize, extend, scale, and/or package for end users.
In the early days of WordPress, these two worlds were far more intertwined. But in recent years, they’ve been drifting apart. In my view, that’s not a healthy development.
The growing divide
WordCamps are still the home of the community: friendly, grassroots events where contribution and collaboration thrive. But increasingly, we see more business-oriented gatherings (like CloudFest), where the vibe is almost purely commercial, and the goals are all about growth and scale.
These two types of events do overlap. Community people sometimes also go to business events. And some business people show their face at WordCamps, and some events like PressConf and the Cloudfest hackathon are a bit more in the middle. However, WordPress’s community and business wings are no longer working as closely as they once did. It wasn’t always like this. In the earlier stages of WordPress, most people (even those starting businesses) began by contributing. They attended meetups, gave talks, and submitted patches. The community and the economy grew hand in hand.
What changed?
Part of this shift has to do with how people use WordPress. In the past, building a WordPress site required some level of hands-on learning. You didn’t need to become a developer, but you did need to understand how WordPress worked: how to install plugins, configure themes, and make things work together. That learning process itself often brought people into contact with the community.
Today, the landscape is different. Many SaaS competitors like Wix, Squarespace, and Webflow offer smooth, fully hosted experiences. WordPress, out of the box, does not have an answer to those SaaS competitors. Historically, it was comparatively easy, but now it isn’t very easy to use compared to those competitors.
To compete, hosts and agencies have made solutions themselves, making WordPress more straightforward to use. Some big hosts created their own onboarding experiences, while others use solutions like Extendify to help new customers onboard to WordPress. With that, turnkey website configurations have emerged: pre-installed plugins, custom hosting dashboards, automatic updates (a good thing!), and almost white-labeled hosting experiences. Many people using WordPress don’t even really know they’re using WordPress anymore.
As a result, many end users don’t interact much with the WordPress software itself (or with the community). They don’t pick plugins from the directory; the host does that. They don’t learn the intricacies of themes; their agency handles that, or it’s done for them through an onboarding experience. This makes WordPress easier for them to use, but also much more abstract.
The rise of hosting power
This simplification has shifted the “power of choice” toward hosts and platforms. In many cases, they now decide which plugins and themes are installed and which WordPress businesses get visibility. Meanwhile, consolidation has further amplified this imbalance. Large hosting conglomerates own multiple brands and tools and buy plugin companies, creating tightly integrated ecosystems. This makes life easier for users but also concentrates influence and marginalizes the independent developers and small teams that once defined the WordPress economy.
Why it matters
Some of these changes are inevitable. Software evolves, markets mature, and convenience becomes king. But we should ask ourselves: What do we lose when the business side of WordPress grows increasingly detached from the community?
The community is where innovation begins. It’s where accessibility, inclusion, and openness are championed. It’s where long-term sustainability (not just short-term revenue) is considered. If the community shrinks or becomes sidelined, the values that made WordPress special may fade, and with that, the open web.
At the same time, businesses benefit immensely from the existence of that community. The software is free. The ecosystem is rich. The brand is trusted. That didn’t happen by accident. It happened because of a passionate and generous community. The success of WordPress businesses rests on that foundation.
Let’s also be clear that the gap goes both ways: many in the WordPress community have long disliked those making a lot of money with the software. All while attending their heavily sponsored WordCamps, for which the ticket price often doesn’t even cover 20% of the actual cost of the ticket.
Reconnecting the worlds
To ensure a vibrant future for WordPress, we must bridge the gap and take care of our commons together. We need companies to actively support the community, not just with money but also with time, code, resources, and visibility. We need hosts to promote independent developers and plugins, not just their own ecosystems.
And we need community members to welcome business folks, even those passionately focused on profit, into conversations about the future of WordPress. Most of all, we need to remember that WordPress is stronger when both of its faces are looking in the same direction.
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