In this video, I want to talk about plugin ecosystems, or maybe you could call them plugin silos, where you got a family of plugins all from the same company. Is there any risk associated with that, or is it overall a good thing? Let’s discuss. One of the things that I have been seeing for a while, and you’ve probably noticed it, too, were these plugin ecosystems that are coming together, where you have a whole family of products, a whole suite of products that are coming out from the same company. One of the first ones I ever worked with was Thrive Themes. And Thrive Themes offered a whole suite of different products, and they bundled it all together as Thrive Suite. And overall, for a while there, it was a pretty good package. Then, of course, Awesome Motive bought it, and in my opinion, they screwed a lot of things up. And so I am definitely not a fan of Thrive Themes anymore for multiple reasons. But those types of ecosystems have been developing in other circles. I just mentioned Awesome Motive. They are one of them because a lot of times you see sites where they get into the Awesome Motive ecosystem, where they might be using WP Code, WP Mail SMTP, they might be using Member Press, they might be using Optin Monster.

You get a lot of things that are part of the same company, the same family of products, products, all WP beginner verified, that type of thing. Another one that you’re seeing is the Sure products. So this would be things like SureCart, SureDash, SureForms. I think they just came out with SureRink, SureSE, I mean, I don’t know. It’s like there’s a lot of different ones that are all coming out of the same team. So that’s one. And then a lot of times what I see when I go into a site that is using the Sure products is that that site owner really gets into the Sure products, even to the point of using ASTRA and Spectra because it’s from the same development team overall. Auto kit because it used to be called Sure Triggers. It’s all from the same team. Then, of course, we have the Fluent line of products, which I’m a massive fan of from WP Managed Ninja. And this is an ecosystem where you’ve got Fluent Cart, Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Affiliate, Fluent Community. And you see a lot of people who, when they get into this ecosystem, they end up running a lot of different fluent products.

And so that’s what I’m referring to here, where you have a suite of products all coming out of one single company, basically. It’s not always the same development team, because a lot of times they will have different teams within the same company, all each with their own focus. But it is ultimately coming from one single company with its own company culture, their own philosophy on how they do things, and that can affect the overall suite of products. Now, one of the big reasons that I hear about people going into these different plugin ecosystems is the ease of integrations. The idea would be that when you run these families of products, that they’re going to work together really seamlessly, work together really nicely, and everything’s just going to be like grease lightning the entire time. And very often that is true, to be honest with you. I will say it’s probably a lot less so with the awesome mode of family of products, and And that’s because of the strategy of Awesome Motive. You may not even know that company name because their products are not necessarily marketed under the Awesome Motive brand, but basically they go around and they acquire a lot of different plugins.

And so what happens is that you got something like member press that looks decidedly different than something like Optin Monster, or WP Code, or WP Forms. That’s because the team has developed some of these products themselves, but other ones, they’ve simply purchased, and they were put together in an entirely different way. And so you end up with a ecosystem that is not necessarily the ones that just work together seamlessly. They don’t have the common branding and stuff like that. But one thing with automotive, you’ll often find is that they’ll auto-install themselves. They technically have a way that won’t happen, but you have to really pay attention to what you’re doing when you install, because very often, I will find that if a site is running, say, WP Forms, they’re also going to be running WP code. They’re also going to be running WP Mail SMTP. Why? Because the owner of that site didn’t really know any better, and they probably just said they were getting marketed to inside the admin panel to install these things to solve some a problem. And it was being marketed to inside of one of the plugins. That’s one thing we’ll talk about here in a bit, is that that’s something these ecosystems sometimes do, and it’s a bit of an annoying thing.

Now, when it comes to the sure family of products, they actually do integrate together quite nicely because it’s done in a cohesive package. And then the same exact thing with the fluent line of products. And so when you bring these things together, you do have an ease of integration. Often you have integrations that are tighter, they’re more streamlined, and they’re also sooner, because usually these development teams are going to work on integrating their own products before they start worrying about other people, which frankly makes perfect sense. And so when you own the website and you’re just trying to have a package of software that just does its job and does it well and doesn’t give you a lot of trouble, there is definitely a strength to stand paying within an ecosystem. Now, the flip side of one of these ecosystems is that it makes the company itself behind that ecosystem a bit of a single point of failure. That’s one of my biggest issues, is that you really do need to know, like, and trust the company behind it. Otherwise, you could end up getting caught with your pants down. That’s what happened with Thrive Suite.

The Thrive Suite was a perfectly good suite of software. As I I mentioned earlier, and then they sold out. Shane sold it to Awesome Motive, and everything changed. And so what happened is you have a lot of sites out there that were utilizing Thrive Suite that now found themselves in a situation where they felt locked in, literally locked in, because Awesome Motive started locking out people from their own damn websites if you didn’t pay the doubled subscription fee. And so I released my hate videos about Thrive Suite. Frankly, it felt really bad to do it because I had spent so long really being a big fan publicly of Thrive Suite, and I did not appreciate what they did when they purchased it. That is one of the biggest risks, associated with an ecosystem like that is that the company could literally just change out from underneath you. Now, when you look at Automotive, that’s a company that I generally stay clear of, to be honest with you. I don’t have any personal problem with the people behind it. I’ve hung out with Syed many, many times, and I like the guy, actually. He’s a gifted guy.

I just don’t like the way the company itself operates because of the way they acquire the software and then change everything. I do think their subscription fees are frankly a little high for a lot of their software. I’ve seen them do lockouts where if you don’t pay the fee, you get literally locked out of your software and it starts disabling itself. I’m not a fan of some of their tactics, and so I generally stay away from that company and avoid the ecosystem. When it comes to the Sure line of products, I don’t have the same negative feelings about them, but it’s a little bit of an agree zone to me, and this is just me. For For one, some of their products do operate with a cloud component to it, specifically SureCart. That does not make it a bad product. In fact, in a lot of ways, it blows a crap out of Woocomers. It’s just that it’s a personal preference of mine. I prefer to have no reliance on such platforms in terms of the cloud infrastructure. At least it’s just a digital sovereignty play for me. And so for that reason, I don’t use SureCard, but I’ve got nothing against the product.

But that’s something you need to be aware of when you’re using the Sure system, is that there is some of that cloud stuff built into it. The other thing with the Sure system is that I am personally noticing, and I don’t like, that they’re becoming more aggressive when it comes to in-panel advertising. A lot of their plugins are now building in much more obvious cross-sales and up-sales into their other plugins. That takes up valuable screen real estate. You can’t turn it off. And so even if you got a pro-version of something you paid for, you’re getting advertising and links in the menu system of WP Admin for their other plugins. That’s spam as far as I’m concerned, and I’m not a fan of it. So that’s one of the things that I’m also not liking about the Sure line of products, is that they’re getting a little bit too Lucy-ducy when it comes to admin panel spam, and I don’t like it that much. And then you move over to the Fluent line of products, which, as you guys know, I’m a big fan of Fluent CRM, Fluent Forms, Fluent Community, all these things. These guys are actually my favorite team of the ones that I’ve mentioned so far because they don’t tend to have any of these bad habits.

They’re The cost promotion of their other plugins is actually really light. They don’t clutter up the menu system with them. I love their pace of development. I love their company culture, how accessible they are. I actually I prefer the way their plugins are put together. I think they’re very good on performance. So I have a lot to like about them. It’s one of the reasons I’m a big fan of that particular ecosystem. But at the same time, is there a risk? Yes, there is. What if WP Managed Ninja sold out? It could happen. It’s not impossible. I’m not seeing any signs of risk so far, and I’ve actually had some private chats with them, and I know that there’s been efforts to acquire them. There have been things they’ve had to fend off, to be frank with you. It’s a very competitive landscape. So the risk is there, that the company could literally change, and we’ve got ourselves an issue. I’m just not seeing any red flags right now, and it seems like their heads are absolutely in the right spot. But that is one of those things that you have to be aware of when you’re using a plugin, silo ecosystem, whatever you want to call it, is that your single point of failure is the company.

You’ve got to know, like, and trust the company. You got to have a good gut feeling about the company because the company is who could ruin everything for you if they decide to suddenly sell out and shift and change their ways. And then you got yourself a potential problem where you’re stuck into things. I know with the way that the fluent products are put together, they are completely digitally sovereign. You self-host them and own every everything in there. So frankly, even if the company decided to go out and go to the dark side, your plugins would still work. You just don’t update them, you’d be okay. But it’s just one of those things you got to be aware of. You are seeing other platform plays out there as well. There’s the JET family of plugins. Let’s see, I’m trying to think of some of the other ones out there. Oh, Elementor is turning into one a bit because Elementor, they keep tacking so many things onto Elementor to make it do so many different things. And they’ve even got the hosting plan now and all that that they’re trying to turn into an ecosystem in and of themselves.

You’re seeing LearnDash in a way. They’re doing it with their hosting package as well to get you ingrooved into particular ecosystems. And it’s good. It’s nothing necessarily bad about it. It’s just something that as a consumer of these products, We need to remain aware of the pros and cons of it and know what we’re getting into, and do a little research for ourselves to see what we’re most happy with in terms of that particular product line, and mainly the company behind it and their philosophy, the way that they operate, because it’s super important. And I think you’re going to probably see even more of this. It tends to be something that happens in marketplaces over time, is that you start to develop to develop these power centers, and what you don’t want is for them to turn into a monopoly. We don’t have any monopoly in WordPress, but we are definitely seeing these power centers growing up, where development teams are growing an entire suite, And that suite of different plugins ends up getting a whole lot of market share. And there’s a lot of marketing effort behind that, cross promotion side, the admin panels, things like that, that make this stuff happen.

And And so, again, you just need to know what you’re doing going in so you don’t get caught with your pants down. Because the other thing, too, from an entrepreneurial standpoint, you got to know that some of these guys, some of these companies, are leading to an acquisition. They’re doing a lot of this so they can increase market share and possibly get themselves an exit down the road because they increase the market value of that particular company, and they can sell the whole thing out and have one massive payday. But then You as a consumer, you don’t exactly know what’s going to happen after that. And that’s where the real question mark always comes in. So should you use these ecosystems? Is it something you need to be weary of or try to avoid? No, the answer is not. If you’re going to go and do it, just do it with your eyes open. Of the ones that I’ve mentioned so far, I’ve mentioned some horror stories like Thrice Sweet. I’ve mentioned companies that I don’t think do things right, so I wouldn’t want to get into their ecosystem. So that one would be also a motive.

I think Sure is maybe. They’re okay. They’re fine. There’s some things I don’t like about how they operate, but it’s not like they’re bad or anything. I personally prefer WP Managed Ninja. I think that they are a good company with the right intentions, and I like their products quite a bit. But again, I’m not naive. I do realize that the day could come that the company sells. And we’ll have to see how that gets managed. And I’ve even joked with the CEO, the company, Jules, about it. I was like, Please just don’t sell out to Awesome Motive. I’ll be really happy. I think I made the same joke to Jack with WP Fusion before. Just don’t sell to Awesome Motive because that would be a problem. So anyways, no, there’s nothing wrong with using these ecosystems. They do have their strengths, especially when it comes to integrations. There’s a certain convenience to it in a lot of cases, but also realize WordPress is WordPress. We’re not stuck with any of these things. Ultimately, each of these ecosystems are not silos in the fact that they keep you from using other stuff. You can use other stuff, and most of the time, these plugins will work together just fine.

So that’s one of the beauties of WordPress. You’re not stuck with anything. It really just comes down to personal preference. If you’re going to stick into one of these ecosystems, just don’t do it blindly. Don’t just accept auto installs. Don’t just be like, Hey, this product is awesome. This The other one must be just as good. You never really know, okay? And just realize the game that is being played on the other end when it comes to increasing market share. I mean, when the Sure Company, I forgot what they’re called off the top of my head, but when they released Sure Rank or Sure Forms, I was like, What’s the point of those things? WordPress needed another forms plugin, like we need another SEO plugin. We don’t. It was a platform play. They’re increasing numbers, and they’re going to increase buy-in into the Sure ecosystem. It makes sense, but it makes sense from their perspective, not necessarily ours. So you just got to go in with your eyes wide open, evaluate the product on its merits, because certainly, you don’t need to use all Sure products just because you use one or two of them.

Same thing with the Fluent stuff. Just because you use one or two fluent products doesn’t mean you have to use all the other ones. You just don’t. They will work together fine with other things. And perhaps that gave you something to think about. And you also may have some opinions of your own, and I’d love to hear them. So just feel free to post in the comments below on any of your thoughts on these different ecosystems of products, perhaps your experiences with them. And by all means, there’s never one way to go. If you have a different opinion than I do, that’s perfectly fine. That’s the beauty of WordPress. We can all do things our own way. If you have any questions, you can also post them below or just go over to blog marketing academy. Emy. Com and shoot me a message, and I’ll be happy to get back to you there. All right, we’ll be talking soon.