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Why $99 WordPress Care Plans Are Dying · Wpfavs - Your favourite WordPress news

• 0:13
  So, so I was looking at the numbers from this recent report on the plugin
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  repository, and, er, it really hit me.
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  The classic ninety nine dollar a month agency care plan, you know,
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  where you charge a client to run updates and click buttons,
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  it is essentially dead walking.
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  It, it really is.
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  I mean, when tools like WPadmin.AI or Benjamin Intal's new Ahentic AI workspace can
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  handle full site migrations, database cleanups, and troubleshooting inside wp admin
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  in literally three seconds using native APIs, what are you actually billing ninety
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  nine dollars for?
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  Right, right, exactly.
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  And it gets even worse when you look at what clients are actually paying you to
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  maintain.
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  WP Goldmine did an audit of 57,383 plugins in the directory,
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  and twenty four percent of plugins in the ten thousand to one hundred thousand
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  active install range haven't been updated in over two years.
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  That is twelve hundred and nine popular plugins with massive user bases just sitting
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  there, completely abandoned.
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  Wait, twenty four percent?
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  Almost a quarter of those mid tier plugins are just ghost ships?
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  A quarter!
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  Things like Limit Login Attempts or WP Downgrade.
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  So agencies are sending monthly invoices for quote unquote proactive maintenance,
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  while literally quarter of the key plugins on the site haven't seen a single line of
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  code changed since 2024.
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  I, I actually had a client ask me about this last month.
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  They installed Novamira CLI, connected Claude Code directly to their terminal,
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  and watched an AI prompt execute a full staging update, run visual regression tests,
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  and push to production automatically.
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  They literally sent me a screenshot and said, um, hey Nick,
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  why am I paying your retainers when a terminal command does this in twenty seconds?
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  That is the moment right there.
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  The moment the client realizes that routine maintenance has zero marginal cost,
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  the legacy care plan collapses overnight.
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  So if the ninety nine dollar care plan is dead, where does that leave agencies?
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  I mean, do web design shops even exist in two years, or does everyone have to
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  rebrand as an AI systems integration firm?
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  Well, the forward thinking agencies aren't competing with the agents,
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  they are configuring them.
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  They are pivoting to what I call Agent Architecture.
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  Instead of ninety nine dollars for updates, they are charging five thousand dollars
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  or more up front, plus high margin retainers, to set up governance,
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  sandboxing, and permission structures for tools like Angie Super Admin Mode.
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  Because when you give an AI agent super admin rights where it can execute PHP,
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  query the database, and write to the file system, you need serious guardrails.
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  You need human in the loop controls, security boundary auditing,
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  and proper API scoping so the agent doesn't accidentally drop a database table or
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  expose private client data.
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  Yes!
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  And it extends to how sites are discovered now too.
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  Traditional SEO retainers tuned keyword density.
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  Now agencies are building AI ready infrastructure, setting up clean schema,
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  dedicated REST endpoints, and llms.txt files so ChatGPT, Claude,
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  and Gemini can index and recommend the business directly.
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  And look at security.
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  When WordPress seven point zero point two came out as an emergency release to fix
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  that REST API batch route Remote Code Execution bug reported by Adam Kues,
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  clients didn't just need a patch pushed.
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  They needed supply chain verification to make sure no rogue agent or stale plugin
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  had been exploited before the patch landed.
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  Exactly.
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  The agencies that survive 2027 won't be hand crafting pages or clicking update
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  buttons.
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  They will be managing fleets of autonomous site agents, enforcing security policy,
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  and ensuring their clients are visible to AI engines.
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  It is a total shift from manual site maintenance to intelligent agent governance,
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  and honestly, the shops making that jump right now are going to dominate.