FluentCommunity – And Goodbye RankMath

Busy week ahead! So, we’re going to be diving right in here…

As this issue is being sent to you, FluentCommunity is now launching. I am seeing this plugin has an alternative to BuddyBoss and, while we’re still early, I think it definitely will be.

As they always do, they’re launching this plugin with special offers for lifetime licensing. Those lifetime rates will indeed go away.

So, I have just published a full “first look” review and walk-through video of where FluentCommunity currently stands. Check out below.

I also want to talk about SEO plugins… and why I’m cancelling RankMath.

And lastly… how you can save money using WooCommerce.

So, let’s do this thing…

SEO Plugins – And Goodbye Rankmath

There are quite a few SEO plugins out there for WordPress. Some of the common ones are RankMath, Yoast SEO, All in One SEO, SEOPress, etc.

To be honest, they pretty much all do the same things. Just a few extra gizmos here and there and some differences in the user interface, but they all pretty much do the same thing.

I have been using RankMath for quite awhile. In fact, I had a business license to the PRO version of RankMath. I used it not only for my own sites, but also made it available to Concierge clients as it was part of the Concierge Toolkit.

But, that is now ending. As I am cancelling my subscription.

Now, to be clear, I still think RankMath is perfectly fine. But, if you’re using RankMath still, I’d just stick with the free version. It does all the important stuff and there’s just no need for the rest of it. Especially considering the price…

RankMath Pro is, I believe, getting too expensive. The Business plan pricing was raised to $299/year. Seeing as the company is based overseas, I’m also paying a 21% VAT tax on top of that. This puts my annual renewal at $362.85. $30/month for a freakin’ SEO plugin.

RankMath has also gotten a little bit bloated with AI stuff that I don’t need or use. The “Content AI” credits are yet another charge on top of the cost of the plugin. Not to mention all the screen space taken up by those things.

Now, let’s look at the pricing of some of the competitors….

Yoast SEO Premium is also quite expensive for multiple websites. You basically have to stack subscriptions with minor volume discounts. Even the cost for one site is $99/year. So, if you’re using Yoast, I’d just stick with the free version, too.

All In One SEO is now an Awesome Motive plugin, with all that that entails. And yes, it is pretty expensive for the Pro version, too. They do the usual pricing tricks to make it seem cheaper, but always pay attention to that slashed-out price because that’s the real one. For an agency with clients like myself, AIOSEO would run me $749/year. They can stuff that where it hurts, if you ask me.

Now, let’s look at SEOPress. The interface is nice and it does all of the things. The free version is quite capable and also isn’t constantly promoting in your face. And if you want the Pro version, it is just $49/year for 5 sites. And if you need the big-boy plan like I would, just $149/year for unlimited sites.

Clearly, SEOPress is the better deal. And I have now switched over to SEOPress at the Blog Marketing Academy to test it out.

In terms of capability, SEOPress does everything RankMath does. The interface is nice, although obviously different. It even imported most everything from RankMath so there wasn’t too much to do. It doesn’t have that little scoring thing to help you gamify your SEO when writing content, but it still makes all the same recommendations.

I will probably do a more thorough review of SEOPress in the not-too-distant future.

BTW, another one I came across is Slim SEO. This is a lightweight SEO plugin that does all the major functions. It looks like the core plugin is free and you only need to buy anything if you need a link manager or SEO Schema. Also, both of those are currently available with lifetime plans. I have not yet tried SlimSEO, but looked interesting.

So, here’s where we’re at…

• Most people probably have no need to buy a Pro SEO plugin. Free versions usually do what you need. And in case people think Pro versions get you better rankings…. no. That’s now how it works at all. 😇
• I now use and recommend SEOPress. The Pro version is very reasonably priced. The free version is enough for most and won’t do constant advertising to you nor collect your data.

For my Concierge clients who are using RankMath Pro through me, I have cancelled my subscription and it will remain in effect until June. Between now and then, we can either convert you to SEOPress or you can continue with RankMath with your own personal license. I will be changing the Concierge Toolkit accordingly.

This Week In Concierge

OK, I still have to finalize some things here before I officially announce anything, but figured I’d could give a heads up on some upcoming changes to the Concierge program.

First off, nothing changes for any ongoing and active Concierge clients. I just want to make that clear. 😇 But, here are a few changes likely to happen for new clients going forward:

• Multi-site discounts will be going away. It has been that additional sites could be added for $69/mo, but the economics of things here mean that each site moving forward will need it’s own Concierge plan. You can “stack” plans.
• The client discount on Anytime Credits will be changing. Instead of a universal 30% discount, I will soon be making it so that clients on the Core plan will get a 15% discount, Growth plan will get 20%, and Platinum will get the full 30%. Again, I will not change terms on existing clients, so all current clients will continue to have access to the same discount I’ve always promised.
• Clients on the Platinum plan will be upgraded to real-time backups. This means instead of once per day as usual, it will be real-time. Perfect for active membership sites and ecommerce stores to make sure we always have updated backups of all new signups and sales. And again, all backups are done off-site using BlogVault, so we’re never dependent on the web host.
• Platinum clients will now get a personal, individualized site audit once per month done by your’s truly…. via a private Loom video. Each month, I’ll go over the site and point out opportunities for improvement, both on the technical front and opportunities for improving conversions.
• The Concierge Toolkit will be broken up into a couple of tiers, where Core clients still can use most of them, but some of the more expensive plugins will be reserved for clients on Growth plan or higher.

For existing clients, no changes will take place for site discounts or credit discounts. However, all existing Platinum clients will get the new perks without any changes of rates. Platinum just gets better. 😇

I will make this more official pretty soon. And if you enroll your site in Concierge before I officially announce these changes, you’ll be grandfathered in to the current discount structure like everybody else.

WordPress Quick Bits

WordPress 6.7 Released . Last week, most of you probably saw your site auto-update to WordPress 6.7. Of course, that usually means a larger volume of plugin updates as developers tidy some things up regarding compatibility with the new version. I also saw some reports of WordFence falsely flagging WordPress 6.7 files as suspicious, leading to some issues for some people. That was fixed pretty quickly. Here are some details about the new version of WordPress. Also, Jamie WP did a quick video where you can see what’s new with WP 6.7 in 250 seconds.

WooCommerce 9.4 Released. WooCommerce was updated to 9.4, then quickly upgraded yet again to 9.4.1 as the current stable release. Some new blocks added, plus a number of under-the-hood changes. Read more about it here.

TutorLMS 3.0 Launches On Wednesday. The next major release of TutorLMS is coming out in a couple days. Included will be an entirely new course & quiz builder, new native ecommerce abilities, built-in subscriptions, a starter theme, lesson notes, etc.

WordPress 36% Market Share. HTTP Archive released their annual survey showing a 36% market share for WordPress. I’ve seen different numbers from other sources, such as W3Techs showing 43.7% of all websites using WordPress. Looks like HTTP Archive is focusing on mobile, though, which could be the main difference. They also show Elementor being, by far, the most popular page builder with 56% market share on mobile, followed by WP Bakery, Divi, SiteOrigin and Oxygen. For those on WP Bakery or Site Origin…. I feel bad for them. 🤪

Kadence Theme Gets Maintenance Mode. The Kadence Theme Pro plugin has been updated and now included maintenance mode. You can choose from maintenance mode or “coming soon” and use a few pre-made templates as starting points for the design of your pages. Click to see how it works.

One Page Google Analytics. A new tool has been released called OnePageGA which great simplifies Google Analytics 4 data into one page that is easy to understand. This tool was built by the Awesome Motive guys. Looks interesting, although I’d rather pay less and get Fathom Analytics which is actually simple by nature and doesn’t need external tools to make it make sense.

FluentCommunity Launches. You can see that I’ve just published my review of this brand new community plugin, but this plugin officially launches this morning and is available with a few options for lifetime licensing. This company always launches with LTDs, then you never see them again. So, if this is a tool you think you might want to use, now’s your time. Reminder that Concierge clients can get access to this through me, so just let me know.

WPEngine Expands Fight With Matt. WPEngine has expanded it’s fight with Automattic, claiming that Matt “willfully acquired and maintained” monopoly power over the WordPress ecosystem, alleging anti-trust. More here.

Saving Money Using WooCommerce

I’ve said before that I think WooCommerce is the go-to solution for anything regarding taking payments on your website. It is super flexible and you can customize anything you like. It also integrates with almost everything.

Now, WooCommerce is free. Just like WordPress.

But, just like WordPress, WooCommerce has extensions. And that’s where the real cost of WooCommerce comes in. Or at least it seems that way.

Most WooCommerce-powered sites end up needing some additional plugins to extend or change the standard operation of WooCommerce. One of the most popular is WooCommerce Subscriptions. It is rather insane that WooCommerce doesn’t do subscription payments right “out of the box”, but it doesn’t. But, if you go to add this capability with a plugin, your jaw can hit the floor.

$279/year just to add recurring billing to WooCommerce? And if you buy WooCommerce Subscriptions, that’s the price. There are other competitor plugins, but this one is the most popular.

Another funny one is Order Status Control. This simplistic little plugin simply auto-completes orders for you. Otherwise, they go in as “Processing”. The fact that this requires a plugin is already funny, but the fact it costs $29/year is even weirder. It literally never gets updates, either. 🤣

Right on down the line, you’ll find that if you start adding up the costs of some of the WooCommerce extensions you would need, using WooCommerce begins to feel incredibly expensive compared to other options.

But, it isn’t. And here’s why….

You have to understand that WooCommerce as well as all of the extensions are licensed under the GPL software license. This means that the software is free to use on as many sites as you wish and without restrictions. It is also free to distribute.

So, if it is actually free, why are they charging for it?

Those licenses are for automated updates as well as customer support. Clearly, if you’re using these extensions without those licenses, you don’t get to ask them for help and your updates won’t be automatic. But, you’re still allowed to use it.

So, where do you get these extensions, then?

Since they can be re-distributed as-is under the GPL software license, you would need to go to a site which compiles and makes available GPL licensed software. GPLVault is one of them and I do keep an account with them myself.

For more on my thoughts on these, see: Premium Wordpress Themes & Plugins For Free: What is a Wordpress GPL Club? Are They Legit?

While I pay for support licenses on most things I use, I definitely think understanding GPL pays off when it comes to usage of WooCommerce. And I can say that I’ve never once needed support from the developers of any WooCommerce extension.

If you’re not OK running without customer support, then by all means, purchase all of your extensions. But, if you’re OK being responsible for things on your own, this is how you can save money while using WooCommerce.