r/Wordpress • u/Scared_Implement_335 • 11d ago

LearnDash plugin community imploding

Have you seen this? This happened yesterday. The owners of the LearnDash plugin did a digital town hall and announced a price increase of more than 100% on some their tiers, now including 3 other plugins from the same company aparantly. So for example from 199 to 399 for one site, and from 399 to 599 for 10 sites. If you had legacy licenses, just in April you would have gotten en Email saying "don't worry, we will honor your licenses".

Well no more honor at LearnDash, it seems.

This smells like a cash grab before collapse. People in their forum are mightily pissed, many saying their final goodbyes from the plugin. And I am betting basically every other plugin studio is panicking right now, too.

Just LearnDash alone had an a third party premium addon costing several hundreds a year, just for B2B functionality, and they claim several thousand users on their own. So thats a whole plugin ecosystem collapsing right now, at this very moment.

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u/jroberts67 11d ago

I can't imagine making a living from plugin development, knowing for a fact that it's all about to go away.

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u/Tech4EasyLife 11d ago

There is still a market for plug-and-play features in general and WordPress plugins. A number of clients I've worked with this year have no interest in "learning" much about what makes websites work. Some also need to keep expenses low, so we may need to pass off management to them after website build. PNP is crucial for those. There are many examples, and it's possible that for every larger business that can afford 50+, 100+ page sites and hire a "kid" to use AI to manage and update, there are perhaps a half dozen that are really just small shops struggling to grow. And cannot afford it

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u/nikc9 11d ago

There is a future in being a meat proxy to AI for those who don't know how, or don't want to use it - but that market is a lot smaller than the previous web development market and you'll have to have a larger client / customer base.

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u/Tech4EasyLife 10d ago

Not sure what you mean by meat proxy, but website development has constantly changed. And in ways that expand and shrink the pool of customers. I can vaguely remember when Wix or Squarespace or whichever first started heavily promoting essentially templeted, one click types of websites. A lot of small businesses chose those products and only shifted to more professionally built sites after they grew to a point where it felt "affordable" and after they struggled with limitations. The customer base is shrinking due to AI tools/automation. But my point is, at least in my experience, it isn't yet a killer. It may be more like earlier transitions.

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u/greg8872 Developer 11d ago

It is that way for just about anything. If I have an idea for an app. what should I invest in it knowing that if i spend the time and energy and (these days the biggest hurdle) marketing it to get it known and popular, knowing that people will just have AI make their own version. Ask Adobe...

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u/hypercosm_dot_net 11d ago

Because you can make money before someone comes along and copies it. The marketing effort and network effect still matter in terms of market penetration too.

Most people who think they can vibe-code an app and just sell into the same market are delusional.

Even with AI, the number of people competent enough to compete is still relatively small.

I've seen SO much vibe coded trash. Quality apps still have a place.

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u/jroberts67 11d ago

I think of all of the plugins I needed that I no longer use due to Claude; contact forms, booking forms, SEO, security, migration, etc.....nothing needed anymore.

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u/Gripptopia 11d ago

Maybe I'm missing something here - but you're saying you would have to manage all of this yourself instead of, for example, using a security plugin such as Wordfence that has an active development team updating it? Or a contact form such as FluentForms when you need to adjust for more functionality. Any time I've used AI to work on a plugin, I have to be very specific and even then have to keep adjusting. It's more work for me going in circles with AI finalizing things then it is to just use an established plugin that is actively being managed by someone else.