WordPress in 2025 (& How it Affects Product Builders)

youtube.com/@wpproducttalkWelcome to Season 7 of WP Product Talk! We’re kicking off with a powerful episode that explores the big question: Is WordPress dying, evolving, or thriving in 2025?

🎙️ About the Episode

In this landmark 99th episode, hosts Katie Keith and Zack Katz are joined by Noel Tock, partner at Human Made, to take a deep and wide-ranging look at where WordPress stands today. From its role in enterprise to missed opportunities around first-party integrations and AI, this conversation dives into trends, challenges, and huge untapped potential.

🧠 Key Topics Covered

• Is WordPress Still Growing? A discussion on market share, commercial maturity, and how WordPress is perceived inside and outside the ecosystem.

• Fragmentation and Specialization Why “one-size-fits-all” doesn’t work anymore, and how niche tools are overtaking monolithic CMSs.

• Enterprise and Product Marketing What enterprises actually need (hint: it’s not more features), why plugin companies struggle to sell outcomes, and the difference between selling to small biz vs. enterprise.

• First-Party Integrations: A Missed Opportunity How WordPress could have dominated with first-party integrations (e.g. headless, HubSpot), and what it can still do to catch up.

• AI in WordPress What Shopify is doing that WordPress isn’t, how agentic AI could revolutionize plugin interoperability, and why open source gives us a unique advantage—if we execute.

• Block Editor in Enterprise Why Gutenberg is surprisingly competitive at the enterprise level, and the push toward a hybrid “content repository” approach.

• The FAIR Initiative Why FAIR might be the beginning of a unified distribution format—and how it could open doors to entirely new plugin discovery and marketing models.

💡 Best Advice for WordPress Product Owners

• Katie Keith: Stay informed about where WordPress is headed—especially around AI and the block editor—and let that guide your product strategy.

• Zack Katz: Don’t sell to enterprise unless you really want to—it’s a different world with different demands, and it might not be worth the effort.

• Noel Tock: Build at the extremes—either build platforms that own entry points (e.g. enterprise portals), or build sharply defined, innovative tools that are outcomes-first (e.g. the MidJourney of WordPress blocks).

🔗 Links & Resources

• Selling to Enterprises – Freemius Article (freemius.com/blog/selling-to-enterprise)

• Human Made (humanmade.com)

• FAIR Package Manager Project (github.com/fairpm)

• Follow Noel Tock: Instagram (instagram.com/noeltock) | LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/noeltock)