WordPress Pricing
The challenges and tribulations of pricing a product or service in the WordPress space.
Let's talk about the WordPress industry and pricing for a moment.
It's well-documented that WordPress products are underpriced because there is a certain price expectation from the community. Now, prices have slowly gone up (a good thing!) but not nearly on par when compared to other industries.
Not even close.
When I left LearnDash, the most common tier was around $199 (which would make it expensive across the WordPress space).
Teachable is like... $99/mo... for way less. And they easily make more money than LearnDash. I'm sure you can all think of 100s of other examples. But this also goes for WordPress related services.
By way of example, it's normal in non-WordPress industries for coaching to be $1,000-$2000/mo. Very normal, in fact. People pay this without blinking an eye. I could never charge this for my coaching.
And what I do charge is often met with hesitation, even though I have the background and accolades to justify charging more if I coached outside of WordPress.
The Concept of Value Fatigue
What ends up happening is prices stay low (in both products and services) and the people behind those offerings try their damnedest to pack insane amounts of value into the low price. Now, that's obviously good. But it has resulted in Value Fatigue.
All of us in the WordPress space are so used to the products and services we buy being overly stuffed with value — far beyond the price we pay — that it is driving prices down.
Newcomers go into the space (products or services) and see the main players are charging “X” for “Y”. So, they end up charging a price of “X-1” for “Y+1”.
Rinse and repeat for the next entrant. It's a race to the bottom for businesses, Value Fatigue for consumers.
I wish I had a solution for this, but it's very much intertwined with the culture of WordPress. The needle is moving up, but we are comparing that in a WordPress vacuum. By the same token, maybe it's not something that needs to be “solved”.
Maybe It’s Okay?
Maybe the way pricing is in WordPress is fine. And look, despite low prices, many WordPress businesses do very well.
- WooThemes crushed it early on and sold for tens of millions.
- LearnDash (to my knowledge at the time) was one of the most successful revenue generating WordPress businesses at the time of sale.
- Yoast has been cookin' for years.
- 10up and WebDevStudios benefit from premium rates. Heck, I coach several “small” product and agency companies that are making 7-figures.
While this is great, it's important to understand that these are all the exceptions. The freelancers out there busting their ass on the product or service they are selling are unable to charge what they really should be charging if they were outside of WordPress.
I coach WordPress folks who have started to brainstorm ways to branch outside of WordPress. Not for lack of love, but the grind is considerably more challenging, especially the pressure to continually pack more and more value wherever possible, leading to frustration and ultimately burnout.
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