A response to The AMAZING WordPress Plugin Eco-System (August 2024)
In August 2024 I recorded one of my longest videos, a tour of the WordPress plugin ecosystem. I walked through WooCommerce, Gravity Forms, MemberPress, FluentCRM, TranslatePress, Modern Events Calendar, BuddyBoss, LearnDash, and GiveWP. And I kept pointing out the same pattern: every major plugin integrated with Elementor, and each one had its own circle of add-on developers extending it further.
I called it an upward spiral:
“And the more plugin developers succeed the more they improve the overall value of the WordPress ecosystem. It’s an upward spiral of growth and innovation.”
That is still true. The WordPress ecosystem is one of the great achievements of open source software, and many of those plugins remain excellent products.
But I closed that video with a question, and the answer to it has changed:
“Why would you ever need to recreate the wheel and bear the cost of building custom solutions like these that cannot possibly keep up with the innovation and growth of specialized platforms?”
Why the answer was “you wouldn’t”
In 2024 the answer was obvious. Building a custom events calendar, a membership system, or a donation platform from scratch meant months of programming and a large budget. A plugin spread that cost across thousands of customers. You paid a modest license fee and got the benefit of somebody else’s research and development.
I even described exactly where custom code fit in:
“But you’re always way better off resting on a robust product, supported by another company, and then adding a thin [slice] of your own code, than trying to replicate and maintain your own code to fulfill these technical requirements.”
That was sound advice when your own code was the expensive part.
What we gave up to get those features
Here is what I didn’t dwell on in that video. Every one of those plugins was built to serve thousands of different websites. So each one carries settings, screens, scripts, and features for all of them. Your site might use a fifth of what a plugin does, but it loads and maintains all of it.
Then stack them. Elementor, plus an Elementor add-on pack, plus WooCommerce, plus a WooCommerce add-on for Elementor, plus Gravity Forms and its add-ons. I said it myself in the video, with some admiration: there were companies releasing products “as addons for a combination of two other WordPress plugins.” That is impressive. It is also a lot of layers between your visitor and your content. Every layer is another license to renew, another update to test, and another potential conflict.
We accepted that because the alternative cost too much.
Now we can build the slice you actually need
AI agents have changed the cost of the alternative. When a client needs a focused feature, a simple events listing, a specific form, a members-only page, we can have agents build exactly that, under experienced direction, often in less time than it takes to configure a large plugin and its add-ons. The result is code written for one website: yours. Here is how we build it. It does what you need and nothing else.
That doesn’t mean we throw the ecosystem away. When a client truly needs full eCommerce, or a complete learning management system, a mature platform like WooCommerce or LearnDash can still be the right foundation. The difference is that the plugin is now a choice we make on its merits, not a default we accept because custom code was out of reach.
And we drop the middle layer entirely. We no longer need a page builder plus a stack of add-ons just to make the plugins look the way the design calls for. The agents write that integration directly.
Fewer plugins, fewer compromises
The result is a site with fewer licenses, fewer dependencies, fewer updates to manage, and less code on every page. And it no longer forces the old choice between building it yourself at great expense or inheriting someone else’s bloat.
The plugin ecosystem made the Low-Code/No-Code revolution possible. I was right to celebrate it. But we don’t have to rent a whole wheel anymore when all we need is the part that turns.
¡Viva la Revolución!