If youâve just landed here from the Envato forums, welcome!
I know a lot of us are still processing the shutdown of that space. For years, it was where we connected with other authors, shared advice, ranted about reviews, and helped each other figure things out. Losing that kind of space sucks, but it doesnât have to be the end of the road.
WPBay was built with the same group of people in mind: independent WordPress developers who want more control over their work, better support, and an actual community. Thatâs why this forum exists: to give us a place to talk shop, trade feedback, collaborate, and keep the spirit of that old community alive (just without the corporate silence).
So, feel free to say hi, share what youâre working on, or drop your old Envato username so people recognize you.
This space is still growing, but that also means you can help shape it from the start. The conversations, the direction, the vibe, itâs all open!
See you on WPBay Forums!
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Also, check this blog post I wrote a while ago, it is summing up the path of Envato and steps to be taken next: What Went Wrong at Envato? Why the Biggest Digital Marketplace Is Falling Apart - WPBay
I wonder why they close it 
or not⌠the answer to problems now is running awayâŚ
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This is how I see things now, regarding the Envato Forum closure:
Letâs remember what type of discussions were mostly happening on the forums recently:
- there were people who were complaining about Elements being too pushy and also complaining about their market earnings dropping
- there were some Elements sellers complaining about earnings dropping
- there were some new sellers complaining about their plugins or themes being hard rejected
- there were some customers complaining about the support not being honored on their purchase by some random seller or asking for support with some random issue they encountered with a product.
As all the above is negative promotion for the services offered by Envato, so if you sum the above up, it is a logical step from their part to shut the forum down. They were paying hosting fees and keeping up a team of several people to take care of the forums, which was actually hurting their marketing game.
It is a PR related decision and also one to control the community and the way to form a better public opinion of Envato, by censoring independent voices who used to complain about stuff not being ideal on the Envato forums.
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They closed the Envato Forums because it no longer fitted their requirements. Basically the owners made their money, and when the deal went through with Shutterstock that kind of sealed the forums fate.
There had been for several years a move towards Elements - a pay monthly scheme that made Envato more money and removed money from authors.
Itâs not rocket science - it was just pure greed.
I agree the forum was bad for business, but this feels like another nail in the coffin.
The way to fix this is not to shut down the forum but to start taking action to save your bussines, everything the new CEO did was pure madnessâŚ
I honestly donât understand why you would want to kill your own business. A better solutionâif youâre tiredâis to find someone who isnât, someone whoâs truly part of this business. For Godâs sake, Hichame Assi came from the hotel industry or something like that; he has absolutely no idea what it means to be a software developer or how difficult it is to build a good plugin.
I expect some other wired new soon, I hve to admin closing the forum was the last on my list as a bad thing, who know what is comming next.
At this point, Iâve made peace with it⌠but itâs so frustrating. I invested half my life there.
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I get it. Envato saw the forum as a liability, but for us it was a community. Thatâs what hurts most, it feels personal. The good news is the people are still here, and WPBay can carry on those connections without the silencing. The platform is gone, but the community doesnât have to be.
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I totally agree @CodeRevolution - it did feel personal because for many of us we were heavily invested in supporting new authors, and current developers in the marketplace. Itâs important for creatives to have a community where they can share ideas, learn off each other and just be a friendly face to let them know they are not alone.
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Funny timing: my Envato account just turned 10 years old today. It should feel like something worth celebrating, but instead it just reminded me how far things have fallen. Sales have collapsed to the point where many of us are inching toward the â0 clubâ, and the marketplace has been hollowed out in favor of pushing ElementsâŚ
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I am almost power elite and 16 years I think, which means absolutely nothing.
I remember when I got to Elite Author, I was so happyâŚ
The hotel guy CEO should be so proud of what he did from a billion-dollar $ company, he sold it for 300mil, and now its value is probably a few millionsâŚ
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Same. My dream was to get to that Power Elite Hall of Fame page
I was searching for an Envato email and look what I found haha:
Oh, yeah, those days were crazy⌠I was a âpassionate affiliateâ of Elements, I had a bunch of 30% off coupons for the subscriptions, shared them on YouTube and they were used like warm bread⌠But I did not know what devil I was promotingâŚ
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You see, with these tricks, they managed to fool the authors. At the beginning, there were $500 bonuses and other nonsense, and all the small authors jumped in as if they had caught God by the legâŚ
This clown with eyes â I canât call him anything else â Hichame Assi played his cards perfectly. He went with the idea that exclusive authors would find it too much hassle to move to other marketplaces, and since Envato had no real competition, he exploited all the weaknesses of the authors to create Elements. And honestly, as a concept, Elements is garbage â it has no value for the author, only for the owner.
Now that things are going badly even with Elements, those who used to make $500 a month are now making $50, and theyâve started complaining too.
This miserable CEO destroyed in just a few years the collective work of over 12â13 years. Whatâs even more frustrating is his total lack of involvement â he only posted once on the forum, and it was obvious he was reading what was there, because he shut it down.
From my point of view, he is the main one responsible for everything thatâs happening. I believe that at most by this time next year, Envato will be sold again for around $50 million or less, and so on until a CEO comes in who does what youâre now doing with wpbay â or the whole thing will go to hell.
For me, Envato will just become a cash cow to fund my own site, and my main focus will be on my site and on wpbay. Even if money is harder to make, it doesnât matter⌠at least I wonât feel trampled on anymore.
About power elite I am missing abotu 20k not sure if I will make it but it measn literally nothing at this point.
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Yeah, who could have imagined they would be so incompetent.
I think they could have made it very successful for everyone if they only simply allowed each seller to set their own subscriptions (or not).
That would have also incentivised high quality plugins and themes to join, more quality, more updates, etc.
Kind of like what Shopify are doing - theyâve been killing it for a long time, UI, marketing, subscriptions, ease of use.
(this is just a random plugin)
Check out the pricing for a Shopify plugin - expensive enterprise pricing / month - features based on number of orders etc.
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There are some weird happenings with market as well. For instance trusted updates have been revoked inexplicably on videohive and graphicriver around the same time (Iâve had them enabled for a decade). Itâs even weirder on VH, updates will come through, then the item will revert back and get sent to be reviewed by human. Iâm only trying to change the thumbnail 
Newly added stock videos arenât showing on elements, and thereâs an upload size limit showing up unless using ftp.
I blieve Envato will close soon, I am refferig to the marketplace and soon after Elements will follow.
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Nice new marketplace! Keep up the good work!
Iâm / was Graphic River author since 2015. I still have a porfolio there. My last sale was long time ago 
I have the same story with Creative Market. From $8000/month peak in 2014 to zero today.
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Welcome! I am glad you like WPBay.
It is interesting to see how sales amount change, based on customer demand, marketplace policies and also luckâŚ
I am starting to see a pattern here.
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Do you have any plans to add graphics / fonts categories in the future?
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