Lately Iāve been looking at how fast things are shifting in the WordPress ecosystem, and I have this feeling that sooner or later, WordPress.org will start charging for plugin and theme listings. Probably not tomorrow, not next year, but the direction is pretty clear if you watch closely enough.
The plugin directory has become this giant marketplace disguised as a free community resource. Millions of downloads, companies building full businesses on it, and the reviewers drowning in work and frustration (probably). I think that at some point someone at Automattic is going to say: āWhy are we hosting half the internetās commercial funnel for free?ā.
Large companies enjoy monetizing ecosystems once they get big enough. The big players are already buying up plugins left and right; some of them would happily pay for more visibility or guaranteed low review times. This is my opinionā¦ and I am not saying this would be good or bad.
Curious to hear what you guys think of this. If WordPress.org ever introduces paid listings, I think it will change the WordPress ecosystem in major ways, WPBay included.
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I donāt think so. WordPress runs on this idea of a free and open web, I donāt think they will implement that.
About the reviewer is the same s*it as Envato. I got a plugin approved, and the next one with the exact same logic and code I made sure was soft-rejected multiple timesā¦ I donāt think is possible to get a plugin approved on the first try, each reviewer is different and has different skillsā¦ also the waiting times are terrible.
New plugins are almost invisible; they do not have a very good search system to give a chance to new plugins as well, so in conclusion, adding plugins to WP.org is a nightmare 
One more thing ā when a plugin is rejected or soft-rejected, the reply email is filled with so much copy-and-paste junk that itās crazyā¦
Not great, probably they are using the same system as 20 years ago.
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I am also trying to get a plugin approved on .org and the soft reject emails contain AI generated stuff now, the email is indeed a mess
āItās hard to follow, and one of the reviewers is contradictoryā¦ itās a mess
No matter what you do, youāll get a soft reject. I even left a couple of small issues on purpose so they wouldnāt start digging up weird things that donāt need fixing. If your plugin is solid, they always find some random thing to nitpick and drive you crazy.
In my last plugin, I did not have the patience to fix it manually, and I used an agent to fix things; it workedā¦ I watched a movie while the bugs were fixed
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I imagine they wonāt have only a paid option, since some people really are hobbyists or contributing for free.
Then it becomes a question of what do you offer to paid listings vs. free listings. I guess some simple options are:
- faster plugin review times
- some kind of sponsored / paid / premium badge
- I donāt think increased visibility would really work - it would look kindof spammy to have sponsored listings at the top of plugin searches
If you think about it, charging for only the initial listing is a very small amount compared to the kind of money automattic makes on things like hosting (e.g. $100 per plugin x 50,000 plugins is what? $5 million, thatās pocket change for them). So for it to make sense, it would have to be subscriptions.
Perhaps it will look like this:
- Does your āfreeā plugin have upsells to the premium version? Pay $x/year
- No upselling? Free
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This will not happen. Too many freelancers contribute to WordPress, and the platformās entire success is built on openness, free access, and true open source collaboration. They donāt have a CEO like Hichame Assi who could derail things by trying to turn WordPress into another āElementsā-style closed system or something similarly misguided. Some CEOs simply donāt have their priorities in the right place.
Envato, meanwhile, suddenly wants to position itself as an AI companyāas if we didnāt already have enough of those. If Envato didnāt have a CEO making questionable decisions, it might have remained a success story.
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