The July issue is packed with Core chatter, support workflow wins, EmDash updates, and just enough nonsense to justify another 12 open tabs.

Stick around to the end to see Boomer, whose bark is way more adorable (and hilarious) than his bite.

In today’s edition:

• Hub Tickets turns client emails into actual tickets, because “I saw it somewhere” is not a workflow.
• WordPress 7.1 is already warming up, with collaboration tools, responsive styling, and a release date that lands during WordCamp US.
• Plus: plugin empire stats, AI burnout, dad mullets and some extremely charming handmade WCEU Wapuus.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

 
If you’re the “Dave” of your team, you can feel this image. You solve ONE issue in a single night and instead of being rewarded with a nap in the sun, you’ve been promoted directly into the blast radius of the next one.

It’s a very dev life. Do something well once and suddenly it’s your specialty.

Fix a WooCommerce checkout issue? Congrats, you’re the payments department. Untangle a DNS mess? You are now the domain whisperer. Reply quickly to one client email? Wonderful, they now expect live chat energy forever.

Anyway, while Dave stares into the middle distance and Googles “how much sleep deprivation until the hallucinations start,” let’s see what’s new, weird, useful, and mildly alarming in WordPress this month.

Work Has Begun on 7.1

WordPress 7.0 is barely out of its release party outfit, and 7.1 is already queuing up its walk-on music.

Anne McCarthy has been named release lead for WordPress 7.1, her first time in the role, with work now underway on what’s expected to be the second major WordPress release of 2026.

The official release squad has also been announced, with Benjamin Zekavica and Krupa Nanda on release coordination, Aki Hamano and Joe Dolson as tech leads, plus triage and test leads ready to help keep everything on track and on target.

Some quick updates on what’s happening so far with this release:

• This release will be focused on how people work together in WordPress and will bring in features like suggestion mode, emoji reactions and interactive asynchronous feedback.
• Plus, we’ll be getting new options for responsive styling and pseudo-state styling, which means more possibilities for having fun directly in the Site Editor without reaching for custom CSS.
• One of the big storylines to watch is real-time collaboration. It was pulled from 7.0 before release, and there are still questions about whether it belongs in Core, how it should be tested, and what kind of performance tradeoffs come with letting multiple collaborators (both human and AI) work together in real-time. You can join the discussion on that particular feature here.
• There’s also debate over whether a proposed Knowledge Custom Post Type in Core would help actual humans, or just make WordPress more legible to the robots currently reading over our shoulders.

The current release date is August 19, 2026, which coincides with the final day of WordCamp US. So yes, your staging sites may get another summer workout.

Here’s the official Roadmap to 7.1!

NEW: Tickets Now Integrates With Your Branded Email Address!

You can build the slickest client portal in the world, but there will always be someone who replies to a six-month-old thread with, “Also, can we change the button to blue?”

Unfortunately, “I swear I saw that email somewhere…” is not a scalable business model.

Which is why the new feature we’ve added to Hub Tickets is pretty darn cool. Instead of trying to train every client into a new workflow, you can meet them where they already live: their inbox.

Premium members can now connect a branded support email, like support@youragency.com, and turn incoming client emails into organized Hub tickets automatically. Your team gets assignments, replies, status tracking, and conversation history in The Hub.

Meanwhile, your clients just get to send an email like normal humans who have never once thought about ticket taxonomy.

Give clients the ease of email, while your team gets the structure of a helpdesk.

EmDash Hosting So Far: The Rough Edges Are Getting Sanded

Every shiny new thing has a crunchy phase.

You know the one. The idea is great, the potential is obvious, and the first wave of users immediately finds the exact three edge cases nobody invited to the party.

It’s been over a month since EmDash arrived on WPMU DEV Unlimited Hosting, the team has been busy responding to real-world usage, fixing rough edges, improving performance, and making the hosting experience feel more polished for anyone experimenting with EmDash alongside their WordPress sites.

Some wins so far:

• Newly published EmDash pages and projects now behave like pages and projects, rather than launching themselves directly into the 404 abyss.
• Email is also pre-configured on new EmDash sites, transactional messages now work out of the box, and a tasty little dev-bypass endpoint has been blocked at the server level so bots can go bother someone else.
• Media delivery also got snappier, with uploads now served directly by nginx instead of being routed through Node every time.

Meanwhile, Mark Zahra over at WP Mayor took our EmDash Hosting for a spin, calling out the big practical win for WordPress builders: you can experiment with EmDash without spinning up separate infrastructure, juggling new hosting tools, or turning your dev workflow into a second job.

EmDash can sit alongside your WordPress sites in The Hub, with the same backups, security, support, and dashboard muscle memory you already use.

EmDash itself is still moving fast, so expect more template support and Hub improvements next. For now, though, it’s nice to see the Wild West getting a few paved roads, better signage, and slightly fewer tumbleweeds.

Read the full EmDash hosting update here.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• WCEU was a massive success, with 2,458 attendees from 81 countries nerding out at the ICE Kraków Congress Centre on June 4 to 6. Stats on the number of pierogi enjoyed have yet to be released. (Source)
• According to WP Beacon, Syed Balkhi is the ultimate champion of plugins, creating an impressive 95 of the things, with a total of 23.5 million installs! (Source)
• According to WP Trends, WordPress now powers 33% of the web, down from a 36% peak in 2022. Still a massive slice of the internet pie, but with one less forkfull. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

AI promised less busywork. Turns out managing five assistants still counts as work.

Client hired someone else? Set boundaries before you become free tech support.

AI search is changing plugin discovery. Here’s how to make sure your plugin is recommended by the robots.

Pour one out for the Classic Block.

WCEU Wapuus: Come for the cute handmade swag, stay for the genuinely lovely community story.

Remembering Om Malik, through 200+ heartfelt notes from a community that loved him.

Oh, a “Distraction-Free Writer” plugin? Joke’s on you, Jamie… the distractions are coming from INSIDE MY OWN BRAIN. (Editing existing posts from the front end is cool, though!)

Coffee Break Distractions

A helpful gym bro.

A very entertaining date night idea.

Some delightful LOTR behind-the-scenes footage: All hail, Queen Gandalf!

These guys otter be careful!

Self-conscious about using AI in public? Now there’s an extension for that.

The Dad Mullet: The ultimate haircut for childhood-ruining levels of second-hand embarrassment.

If the first computer you owned is in Steve’s Old Computer Museum, your knees make the startup sound when you stand up.

And finally…

The cutest “bark” ever.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Share it with your favorite WordPress weirdo.

When we shipped this, I openly said it was going to be a bit Wild West. EmDash is bleeding edge, Cloudflare are pushing new releases at a pretty serious clip, and we wanted to get you hands-on quickly, rough edges and all.

So, in true WPMU DEV style, we’ve been sanding those edges down. Here’s a quick run-through of what we’ve already fixed.

1. New pages and projects don’t 404 anymore

Yeah, this one was a doozy.

In the default EmDash template, creating a new page or project, publishing it, then visiting the URL would land you on a glorious 404. Not exactly the thrilling first impression we were going for.

Why does this happen? Unlike WordPress, EmDash templates handle their own routing (it’s built on Astro under the hood). The official template wasn’t accounting for newly created content, so pages and projects existed in the editor but had no public route to live on.

We’ve patched the official template on our end so new pages and projects show up the moment you hit publish.

2. Email, configured out of the box

EmDash handles email differently to WordPress, so we wanted to make sure all the usual transactional bits (passkey login links, user invites, that kind of thing) just work the moment your site spins up.

We’ve built a small plugin that pre-configures email on every new EmDash site on Unlimited Hosting. It sends everything through noreply@yourwpsite.email, exactly like our WordPress hosting does. So, if email works on your WP sites, it works here too. Bundled by default, nothing for you to set up.

3. Tightened up security

A bit of routine hardening, but worth doing.

EmDash ships with a /_emdash/api/setup/dev-bypass endpoint that’s handy during local development. Unfortunately, it’s a delicious target for opportunistic bots once a site is in production. We’ve blocked it at the server level on Unlimited Hosting. You’d never notice it was gone unless you went looking for it. Bots, however, are going to have a less interesting time.

4. Snappier media delivery

A nice little performance win, too.

Media files on your EmDash sites are now served directly by nginx straight from your uploads, instead of routing through Node for every request. Fewer hops, faster images, less load on your site’s runtime. You don’t have to do anything, it’s just quicker now.

5. Hub polish

We’re making the Hub even more responsive and improving the UI/UX behind the scenes. For example, actions like Reset and Rebuild are getting clearer, real-time progress feedback so you’ll see exactly where things are at and know the moment a job’s done. Small touches like these make the whole experience feel that bit slicker.

In case you missed it: we also bundle a contact form with every new EmDash site, pre-wired to the default template’s contact page. There’s nothing to install and nothing to configure. It just works.

So what’s next?

The big one: broader template support.

Right now, new EmDash sites spin up on a single default template. We’re working on extending support to a wider range of official EmDash templates so you’ll be able to pick whichever one suits your project and still get everything above (the 404 fix, the email plugin, and the rest) humming out of the box from day one.

Beyond that, everything is still very much guided by you. Keep spinning up sites and telling us what you’d like to see, and we’ll keep shipping fixes and bundled improvements as the EmDash ecosystem matures.

(And yes, I am still very much hoping someone, somewhere, is secretly working on a DooCommerce. A man can dream.)

Happy Dashing

One client emails you directly. Another fills out your contact form. Someone sends a WhatsApp message. A teammate gets a “quick question” in their own inbox. And, somehow, a client has replied to a three-month-old email thread with something urgent buried under 14 quoted replies.

Soon your “simple” support process has become a bit of a scavenger hunt.

The problem isn’t that your clients need help. Of course they do. It’s that all these requests are scattered everywhere, and keeping track of who said what, who replied, and what still needs doing can turn into a full-time job.

So, good news: Tickets now integrates with your branded email address!

Now, Premium members can give clients a branded support email and have every request automatically become a Hub ticket. Your team can manage, assign, and reply to the request from The Hub and clients receive updates from your branded email address.

Your clients get the ease of email. Your team gets the structure of a proper helpdesk inside The Hub.

So… how does this email-to-ticket wizardry work?

Glad you asked.

1. Set up your branded support email

Create a dedicated support address like support@youragency.com or help@youragency.com.

Instantly, your clients have one clear, professional place to send requests, questions, site updates, “can you just quickly…” jobs, and everything else that usually lands in five different places.

2. Clients send requests by email

They use the email app they already know. No extra password to forget. No mini onboarding session required.

3. The Hub creates the ticket automatically

The client’s email becomes a Hub ticket, ready for your team to assign, prioritize, and manage.

So instead of requests disappearing into inbox spaghetti, everything gets its own tidy little home.

4. Your team handles it from The Hub

Assign it to the right person, reply to the client, track progress, and keep the full conversation history attached to the ticket.

5. Clients receive branded updates by email

When your team replies from The Hub, clients receive the update from your super-profesh branded support address.

Look like you have an entire support department. Even if it’s just you and your cat.

Being able to give your clients a support email like support@youragency.com instead of telling them to log into a portal or submit a form instantly makes your client experience feel more polished.

It signals that your agency has a real support process, and makes your business come across as organized, reliable and scalable. For smaller agencies, it helps you deliver the kind of support experience clients expect from a much larger team.

Your clients don’t need to know what’s happening behind the scenes. They just see a clean, branded support channel and receive helpful updates from your agency, without bolting on a separate helpdesk platform or adding another subscription to the pile.

Behind the scenes, The Hub is doing the heavy lifting: creating the ticket, organizing the conversation, keeping the history, and helping your team stay on top of every request.

Built to be easy to hand off to your growing team

As your agency grows, support gets harder to manage. Hub Tickets helps your team stay aligned by giving everyone one place to manage client requests.

You can assign tickets to team members, track progress from a shared workspace, and keep conversations connected to the request instead of scattered across individual inboxes.

This makes it easier to hand off work between team members, keep client communication consistent, build repeatable support processes and onboard additional support staff as you grow.

Support should live alongside the rest of your client work

Email Tickets is powerful on its own, but the real value comes from the fact that your support now becomes connected to the rest of The Hub.

Now, your support workflow will live alongside the tools you already use to manage your clients and their websites. Instead of adding another standalone helpdesk, your support and the services you sell, the team members doing the work, and the invoices or recurring plans behind it all will be in one place.

Email support? Client portal? Use either, or both!

Email Tickets also works alongside the existing white-labeled client portal option in The Hub. That means you can choose the client support experience that works best for your agency.

• Branded Email Support: The best option for when you want the fastest, easiest way for your clients to ask for help. All they need to do is send an email, and The Hub will turn it into an organized ticket.
• The White-Label Client Portal: The ideal option for when you want clients to log in, submit requests, view their ticket history, and track progress on issues from a professional-looking, branded portal.

By the way, you don’t have to choose one and stick to it forever. You can use one, then switch to another, or even offer both depending on how your clients prefer to work.

Oh, and yes, it’s included with Premium!

No need to go shopping for another monthly helpdesk bill. Email Tickets are included with your membership!

Which means you can give clients a branded support email, turn requests into organized tickets, collaborate with your team, and keep support connected to your clients, sites, billing, hosting, backups, plugins, and all the other Hub goodies you already use.

Just one more way Premium helps you run a sharper, more efficient, more delightfully organized WordPress business from one place.

Ready to start using Email Tickets?

Give your clients an easier way to ask for help, and your team one organized place to manage every request.

Integrate your branded email with Tickets, so you can level up your client support.

As we roll on into June, here’s the low-down on new releases, fancy features and community calls to action. Let’s get into it!

Oh, and stick around to the end to see “rolling on the floor with laughter,” personified.

In today’s edition:

• WordPress 7.0 lands, finally giving Louis Armstrong his WordPress debut after 23 years of jazz names.
• The WP Community Collective wants to know how WordPress folks are really doing. (Anonymous hot takes welcome.)
• WooCommerce 10.8 drops, with a cartload of improvements including faster storefronts, review request emails and Armstrong-friendly admin.

Hot Off The Presses: What’s New?

 
Sure, this meme is funny, but in the age of AI there’s a bigger question starting to loom:

When we stop asking and answering in public, what happens to the shared knowledge base future developers (and future AI tools) rely on?

Stack Overflow may have been famously, uh, “character-building” for anyone brave enough to ask a question, but it also gave us something incredibly valuable: public debugging, weird edge cases, battle-tested answers, and comment threads where the real fix was always hiding three replies down.

It’s worth remembering that the robots learned a lot of that ancient magic from humans posting, correcting, arguing and documenting with their real, flesh-and-blood, Cheeto-dust-encrusted, human typing fingers.

So don’t forget to answer a question in public sometimes! Write up that weird fix you found. Leave a breadcrumb for the next dev Googling in a cold sweat at 11:47pm.

In the meantime, let’s scroll on and see what’s new in the wonderful, weird world of WordPress.

Armstrong Has Landed

I see trees of green, red roses too

I see them bloom, for me and you

And I think to myself…

It’s time to update WordPress!

WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” has officially shipped, named for jazz legend Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong.

Which is wild when you think about it. After 23 years of WordPress releases named after jazz greats, we’re only just now getting to Louis Armstrong?

The big headline is that WordPress 7.0 lays the foundation for AI across the WordPress experience, with an AI Client in Core, the Abilities API, a central place to manage AI connections, plus new creative and workflow tools waiting in the wings. There’s also a refreshed dashboard, new blocks, design controls, block-level custom CSS, and a beefier developer toolbox.

The WordPress AI plugin 1.0.0 was also released on May 19th, adding request logging, connector approvals, improved media and alt text workflows, editorial tools, and early content provenance work.

Of course, with great prompts comes great responsibility. Patchstack founder Oliver Sild has already raised concerns that WordPress 7.0’s AI infrastructure could kick off a gold rush for stolen AI API keys.

Keep the Field Guide handy when you start poking around under the hood. WordPress is hitting some big new notes here, and your job is to make sure none of them turn into an ear-splitting support-ticket squeak.

The State of the Community Survey Wants YOU

In the WordPress world, community is everything. But how IS the community actually feeling right now?

The WP Community Collective aims to find out. They’ve launched their State of the Community Survey, to get an official “vibe check” about where things are headed and the forces shaping our favourite open source project.

Why? “Change needs context,” explains the official press release.

WordPress folks aren’t just usernames on a screen, WP Community Collective CEO Sé Reed explains. We’re people in the real world, navigating very real challenges. To effectively support the community and have productive conversations about the future of WordPress, the first step is to listen to what people have to say.

The survey takes about 10-20 minutes to complete and covers hot-button topics like AI, contributor participation, events and open source sustainability. It’s open to anyone who works with, builds on, contributes to or simply cares about WordPress.

So, whether you’re a freelancer, agency owner, plugin builder, core contributor or theme designer, if WordPress matters to your business you’re welcome to take part.

All responses are anonymous, so you can spill all your controversial takes without worrying about drawing the ire of a digital pitchfork mob. Responses are being collected until June 28, 2026 at 11:00am UTC.

Go ahead, throw in your 2 cents here.

WooCommerce 10.8 is Ready for Checkout

WooCommerce 10.8 brings a shopping basket full of handy improvements for store owners and devs alike.

The newest release landed on May 26th, bringing compatibility updates, performance improvements and plenty of fancy little quality-of-life tweaks designed to make your Woo store run a little smoother.

Some of the improvements include:

• Customer review request emails: Gives stores an easier way to nudge customers to leave feedback, before their retail therapy buzz wears off and they move onto the next shiny new purchase.
• Faster storefronts: Reducing friction from the “Add to Cart” journey so stores feel less “loading spinner of doom” and more “yes, please take my money!”
• Armstrong ready: 10.8 includes about 15 pull requests that align this version with WordPress 7.0 styling, so you can update both together and the admin stays seamless.

Plus, there’s a bunch of other handy behind-the-scenes developer goodies in there, like custom shipping providers, coupon-related workflows and email blocks, that’ll help you build better sites for your clients.

Check out the release notes to see what’s new.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Within one week of Armstrong taking the stage, 46% of all WordPresses had already updated to the new version. But what’s really wild is that there are 0.36% of sites that are still on Version 4.7? Hello? Anyone home? (Source)
• There’s more than one way to center an element. 100 ways, apparently. Although, about 60 of those are “hacky” and “not recommended.” (Source)
• The WooCommerce Design Team decided to reward merchants with the cutest interactive piñata to celebrate their 1st, 100th and 1,000th sales. Who doesn’t love a playful Easter egg? (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

WordPress just turned 23, which in internet years makes it approximately 417. Happy B-Day, WP!

If an AI reads your blog in the forest and nobody clicks through, did you really get a visitor?

Are volunteers needed for WP Suomi in Finland? Oulu betcha.

WP Canada is looking for speakers. Apologizing before your talk is optional.

WordPress.com launched Lately, for when your blog wants to be a group chat with better formatting.

Finally, Jetpack Search now speaks Woo.

We all know the real ultimate AI use case: Making a Wapuu that looks like you.

Coffee Break Distractions

Ok, this is a truly original app idea. It’s like Google Maps for your Mind Palace.

I was proud of myself for my mediocre chopstick skills until THIS made me feel inadequate.

Sometimes you stumble on a website that’s actually a work of art. This is one of those times.

Or, for a work-of-art website that’s equal parts beautiful, simple and calming, check this out.

Iceberg. Canyon. Pineapple. Lighthouse. Research says visualizing random words can help you sleep.

May you be as happy about anything as this dude is about visiting the aquarium.

In an alternative universe where this sax-hating time traveler was successful, jazz music would be very different indeed.

And finally…

Sometimes the very best physical comedy moments take you by surprise.

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Share it with your favorite WordPress weirdo.

But it turned out to be something even better… an April 1st product release to match my favourite of all time (Gmail!).

And something that I thought you good people might enjoy having one-click production access to along with all the other tools you know and love here at WPMU DEV.

So, guess what, I would like to officially launch Managed EmDash Hosting here at WPMU DEV, right alongside your regular WordPress sites.

How does it work?

We’ve made it as easy-to-use as the rest of WPMU DEV, which first up means one-click install.

All you need to do is click “Create Site” and we will spin up a site for you on your Unlimited Hosting server.

Now you are able to SSO login to each site you create, alongside your regular WP sites.

Fully managed, just like your WordPress sites and with the same level of expert support.

What’s in the EmDash box?

In addition to one-click install and SSO login we’ve added a bunch of other goodies, and you can expect more to come soon.

Right now though, here’s what comes included:

• Reset: Resets the site back to a fresh Emdash install, similar to the WordPress Reset tool
• Rebuild / Restart: Rebuild reinstalls dependencies and rebuilds the project (required after plugin or config changes), with a Restart running automatically on completion. Restart is a quick standalone action that restarts the site service in seconds.
• Backups: Same daily backup system used for WP hosting: restore, manual backup, nightly backup, and comments all included
• Domains: Full domain management so users can add custom domains, configure DNS, and go live
• Email: You can easily use our Pro email service with EmDash
• SSH / SFTP: Server-level access only; a single server user gets access to all sites (WP and/or Emdash) on that server
• Server Analytics (Storage): Emdash sites will appear in the storage breakdown so users can see exactly how much storage each Emdash site is consuming.
• AntiBot: Server-level feature; when enabled it will cover all sites on the server (WP and EmDash)
• WAF Security: Managed at server level and protects to both WP and Emdash sites plus optional server-level configuration
• SSO: Emdash is passkey-based, but you can also log in via SSO: one click from The Hub and you’re straight into your admin.

How about plugins?

How did I know you were going to ask that? ;)

Well, we wouldn’t be WPMU DEV without shipping with at least one plugin.

And so here’s your new contact form

What’s up next?

Well, that rather depends on you

And also the broader EmDash community.

If this is a great success and DEV-ers start using EmDash then we’ll increase our commitment accordingly.

Similarly, we’ll look into incorporating your feedback and requests, in addition to community contributions. I mean, maybe there is a DooCommerce in the works

So, go ahead, please have a play, let us know what you think and we will be guided by our members.

Happy Dashing!

UNLIMITED!

(We had to order an extra shipment of sparkle emojis to prepare for this. You’re welcome.)

Forgive our nerdish fervor, but this is kinda a BIG DEAL.

If you’ve been busy touching grass and you’ve missed our recent posts and announcements, strap in.

In addition to the usual tips, goofball tidbits and funny vids, you’re about to get the TL;DR on why this changes everything… and has already inspired our member Rod to invoke the name of the Dark Knight:

In today’s edition:

• Why this ain’t no shared hosting… it’s a totally different beast.
• So how many sites can you REALLY fit on a $15 server? We did the math.
• What our co-founder James is using Unlimited for… and why.

But First: Unlimited… Who IS She?

She’s mysterious. She’s powerful. She contains multitudes.

Unlimited is a new way to run oodles of managed WordPress sites, without paying managed hosting pricing per site.

You get your own little slice of the internet, where you control how resources are allocated. Your server. Your rules.

Every site still comes with ALL the WPMU DEV hosting, plugins, bells AND whistles… yet works out to only around 20 cents per site per month.

Plus, it plays very nicely with the tools you already know and love. Spin up WordPress installs, manage them from your Hub, keep backups flowing, and generally feel like the efficient web wizard your clients know you are.

Game changer, indeed!

Yes, of COURSE there are bigger plans! All the way up to Eta MU with 32 GB RAM, 8 HF-vCPU and 455 GB NVME SSD! The sky’s the limit, babay!

Read the official announcement post.
Oogle Unlimited plans in all their glory.

Wait… How Many Sites Can You Actually Fit?

When we say “oodles” of sites… how many IS that exactly?

Our co-founder James did the math… and it’s kinda outrageous.

(BTW… that featured image? That’s just what happens when James is left unsupervised.)

And what sort of sites is James putting on his Unlimited package? Which ones are staying on Dedicated?

Find out here:
Unlimited or Dedicated Hosting? I co-founded WPMU DEV and here’s what I’m genuinely using them for.

After all, each site costs less than the change in your couch cushions… so why hold back?

Why This Goes WAY Beyond Shared Hosting

Limits? Where we’re going, we don’t need limits.

Unlimited transforms hosting like Doc Brown upgraded that DeLorean… and now it casually bends the laws of space-time. (No awkward dates with your teenage mom required.)

So what’s actually different between Unlimited and your stuck-in-the-past shared hosting?

Spoiler: It comes down to 3 things:

1. You get your own little internet bubble

Unlike traditional shared hosting, the only one using your resources is you.

You can run one massive site, 50 small ones, or a chaotic mix of client projects, side hustles, and that snarky little Stargate SG-1 fan blog you’ve been ranting on since 2003.

No noisy neighbors. No getting taken down by someone else’s viral moment. It’s allllll yours!

2. We took the hosting experience you know and love… and made it work at Unlimited scale

We know you feel right at home in The Hub. It’s giving “everything is right here and I don’t need 17 tabs open to look like a genius” vibes.

Switching to Unlimited is like upgrading from a tidy workshop… to a full factory.

But all your tools are still exactly where you left them.

And since it all runs on the same high-frequency infrastructure that WPMU DEV has spoiled you with for years (hello speedy CPUs and NVME SSDs), everything still feels responsive and lightning-fast.

3. We’re never gonna lock you down…

Plans are monthly. And not the “we already charged you, good luck” kind.

We’re talking pro-rata to the day.

None of those 24, 36, or bazillion-month contracts, or a 12-month “discount” that turns into a financial jump scare next year.

Just spin things up when you need them. Scale them while you’re using them. Shut ‘em down when you’re done.

Use a $15 server for just one day? Cool. Cancel it and you get about $14.50 back.

Finally, hosting that understands your workflow… instead of holding it hostage.

Read more here:
Unlimited vs. Shared Hosting: The Breakdown.

Mind Bloggling Facts & Stats

• Austin Ginder is becoming somewhat of a superhero, foiling the plans of yet another villain hiding sneaky backdoors in plugins. (Source)
• 174 PRs merged. 8 first-time contributors. Gutenberg 23.0 has been BUSY. (Source)
• Speaking of Gutenberg, adoption has climbed to over 60% compared to just 37% in 2020. (Source)

Blogs & Resources You Shouldn’t Miss

Draw Attention is a very cool plugin that lets you turn images into clickable, interactive magic.

Oooh, a Guild! I haven’t joined one of those since my WoW days!

Sometimes, the biggest threat to your site… is you.

The WP Minute on hidden revenue: like a treasure hunt, but the treasure is your own underpriced services.

A completely calm and rational take on why WordPress sometimes makes us scream internally.

The next generation of WordPress devs has entered the chat.

I feel it in my fingers… Will AI make us lose the “muscle-memory” of manual coding?

Coffee Break Distractions

Someone fed ChatGPT a symphony of farts and it reviewed it like an album: “It has a cool, Lo-Fi, late night, slightly eerie vibe…”

When the code totally works… as long as you DON’T TOUCH IT.

“What the fork just happened, guys?”

If you haven’t seen Floor 796, it’s a gloriously nerdy rabbit hole you’ll lose three hours to.

The real hero of HeroPress: Topher DeRosia has officially shared 300 stories with his inspiring project.

Never underestimate your users’ ability to discover entirely new, never-before-seen ways to use your site incorrectly.

This dude refused to take two trips carrying beach chairs… and became a biblically accurate angel.

And finally…

What happened to the rest of those sparkle emojis we ordered?

Love this mix of nerdery and nonsense? Forward it to your favorite WordPress weirdo.

Which has been useful (we deal with any bugs so you don’t have to) and also super interesting!

But also, it means we’ve been using it for a while. So, given that, I’d like to share with you how I’ve been using Unlimited alongside Dedicated.

Important vs. test / playground

Now the first thing might sound obvious, but I’ve got a bunch of sites that I feel quite strongly about.

Like my own blog (allbeit not updated any more… it’s sentimental), or the sites I maintain for my mum and step-dad.

They are very much staying on Dedicated, although given the amount of traffic they get they are absolutely fine on Bronze, so I’m leaving them there.

However, there are many, many other sites that are essentially me playing with plugins and ideas and that have virtually zero traffic, and all of those are going onto Unlimited.

When the cost of a new site is basically… nothing

This is where things get really fun.

Now there are loads of great ‘test out WordPress’ sites that I’ve used over the year, I bet you have your favourites.

The old skool InstaWP was great until, um, I think they decided to become us (not awkward at all lol, flattered I guess).

These days TasteWP is pretty great (thanks guys :)

But now those days are gone! At least for me. Because I can just do it here with Unlimited… and it doesn’t expire or disappear in a few days and it has all the bells and whistles.

So I can even spin up sites, do some work on them and present them to clients – I have a few charity clients, besides my parents – and know they will be able to check them out at their leisure.

And given that I can fit at least 60 of them on one $15/m server this basically means that alongside the few small sites that are on there because they get very little traffic, all of these test and sandpit sites are, well, essentially free!

Which I know shouldn’t excite me as much as it does, but well, it still does.

And it takes less than a minute

I know, I know, it is not ‘instant’ but it might as well be.

In less than a minute you have the whole thing in place, it’s fast enough to just watch the progress bar, although that could well just be me though, I mean I am pretty proud of it .

So yep, that’s how I’m using Unlimited these days.

How are you going to use it? Let us know!

I wanted to take one of our High Frequency servers (you can also use them for Dedicated) and allow users to put over 50 sites on it.

And not just because “50 sites for $15” is helluva catchy (it is though, isn’t it ), but also because that is what our members have been asking for ever since we started offering hosting.

And if there is anything I love doing, it’s listening to our members.

So, after a LOT of hard work we made it… but why should you take our word for it?

Well, I decided to do the work for you and demonstrate how it can be done

And I didn’t just get 50+ sites on there, I got 94, although in the end I decided on 60… let me walk you through it.

Let’s break down each Unlimited site:

Total site size: 250 MB

WordPress core: 80 MB
WPMU DEV Pro Plugins: 150 MB
2025 Theme: 10 MB
Logs: 5 MB
Database: 5 MB

Now, I know you love math, so our Alpha MU plan has 32GB of NVME SSD storage and uses 9GB for system resources which leaves us with 23GB of storage for you.

That’s 23,522MB on which you could literally install 94 vanilla sites.

But of course you are going to want to add new themes, plugins and content to those sites and over time your database and logs will grow too.

So, if you instead go for 60 sites that gives you an extra 142MB to play with for each site (on top of everything else).

Which, with some nicely Smushed images we reckon is more than enough for the portfolio sites you would probably want to be hosting… plus quite a bit change, plenty for a few staging sites if you fancy too.

And ends up with another neat bit of maths… each of those sites will be costing you 25 cents (yep, $0.25) per month.

I can’t wait to see what our Premium members do with it :)

p.s. Did you like the featured image? :D

Genuinely special, not just ‘we say this is special but really it’s just shared hosting with fancy clothes’, but something that took that whole paradigm and changed it for the better.

Well, we’ve called it Unlimited and here’s why we think it’s special.

We built an isolated and compartmentalized environment that would always allow you to be in control.

Special, part 1, done.

But how were we going to manage it, what kind of experience would be just as special as the technology behind it?

Well, we tried every single different idea, from good old cPanel / WHMCS (bless, but ewww) to a brand new UX and hosting experience.

But we kept on coming back to why people love WPMU DEV hosting as it is… the tools, the ease of use and having everything in one place.

And so that’s what we decided to create.

The hosting experience and tools that you know and love at WPMU DEV, replicated for as many sites as you can fit on your super fast NVME SSD.

Special, part 2, nice.

And last, but not least, we knew that hosting for web developers and digital agencies is an ‘on demand’ thing. You need it when you need it, and when it is gone, it’s gone.

So, while we have made our plans almost recklessly affordable… the real kicker is that they are monthly and pro-rata to the day.

If you only use our $15 Alpha MU plan for 1 day of the month and then cancel, we will credit you $14.50.

No 12-month-discount followed by a huge price increase. No 24, 36 or 48 (lol!) month contract paid up front.

Just what you need, when you need it.

You guessed it, Special, part 3!

Which leaves us with:

Regular shared hosting

• A segment on a massive machine, non compartmentalized, impacted by other clients
• Running a decades old hosting platform (almost always WHMCS and cPanel behind it)
• Discounts when you pay upfront and are locked in for years… followed by huge price increases

WPMU DEV Unlimited

• Compartmentalized, isolated high frequency server where the only sites that matter are your own
• Each site has the complete suite of hosting tools, from staging to incredibly easy all-in-one-place management
• Astonishingly affordable flat price with no renewal shocks, pay for only what you use, to the day

Now, obviously I would have loved to put that all on a landing page… but our copywriter said ‘no’ haha.

So here it is, the business decisions behind Unlimited Hosting and the reasons for them.

If you haven’t tried it out yet then give it a go… and heck, we’ll even refund you in full for any reason in your first 30 days, so you don’t even have to worry about pro rata!

And let us know any questions or thoughts you’re having in the comments below.

We cannot wait to see what you do with your new hosting setup

Before I begin, I want to take you back to the dawn of shared web hosting – specifically, the birth of the revolutionary and wonderful cPanel and WHM.

And I have a confession to make: without cPanel (and, specifically, Fantastico) I genuinely don’t think I’d be here writing this now. The ability it gave people to play with open source tech on a $7/mo slice of a server was… spectacular.

I used WHM to build the first Edublogs Campus back in 2007 (now CampusPress) and I’m still slightly amazed that it existed.

And for a long time, platforms like that (and their derivatives) have been the basis for pretty much every successful shared – and therefore very low-cost – WordPress hosting service since then.

Until today. Because we’ve made a better mousetrap

Introducing: WPMU DEV Unlimited

A new way to run a lot of WordPress sites on a premium managed hosting platform – without paying “managed hosting pricing” per site.

Here’s how it works:

• Over the last 6 years, we’ve built the most feature-rich, efficient and elegant managed WordPress hosting platform you could imagine.
• It sits on top of high-performance Virtual Machines (VMs) powered by 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors and next-gen NVMe SSD storage, so you can get the full premium managed WP experience for a fraction of the cost – and the ability to easily scale up as your needs grow.
• And now we’ve adapted that platform so you can split a VM into as many WordPress sites as you want, while still retaining the full WPMU DEV hosting stack.

We’re calling it Unlimited.

The entry plan: Alpha MU (yes, we’ve brought back the MU )

For $15/mo you get a high performance machine with:

• 1GB dedicated RAM
• 1 vCPU powered by high-frequency 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors
• 32GB NVMe SSD storage

Alongside our system storage requirements, that’s typically enough for 50+ cached portfolio/brochure sites (traffic dependent), each running in a fully managed WordPress environment with all the tools and tricks you want.

Or: 1 decent WooCommerce site and, I dunno, 20 portfolio sites on the side

Hey – it’s up to you.

The important thing is this: it’s there for you to do with as you please. Make of it what you will.

Why this isn’t “standard shared hosting”

If you’re thinking: “Hang on… 50+ sites for $15/mo sounds like old-school shared hosting”… I get it.

But Unlimited isn’t a bargain-basement cPanel box with noisy neighbors, mystery limits, and “best effort” performance. It is powered by the same platform behind WPMU DEV Hosting, offering the same powerful features and optimized to host unlimited WordPress sites on private, dedicated resources – which means you’re getting managed WordPress hosting, not “shared hosting with a WordPress installer.”

Simply put, you have full control over what sites are hosting.

Performance + stability (the stuff that keeps sites fast)

You get the platform-level performance stack (not something you’re duct-taping together with plugins), including things like caching, a tuned server environment, and the kind of infrastructure decisions that stop one site dragging everything else down.

Plus (as we may have already mentioned, but it deserves saying again!) your sites are running on state of the art high-performance hardware, including 3GHz+ Intel Xeon processors and next-gen NVMe SSD storage.

Security that’s on by default

This is a big one. Standard shared hosting tends to put the burden on you: install security plugins, configure them correctly, keep them updated, hope nothing breaks.

Unlimited flips that: security is part of the platform – the same approach we use across our managed hosting.

Backups you can trust (and restores that don’t ruin your day)

Automatic backups, offsite storage, simple restores – the kind of safety net you want before you need it.

Workflow tools for people who manage lots of sites

Staging, cloning, Multisite support, WooCommerce readiness, and dev-friendly tools – the stuff agencies and freelancers actually rely on.

Everything managed in The Hub

This is the “unfair advantage” when you’re running lots of sites: updates, monitoring, reporting, alerts, and site management – from one place.

That’s the point of Unlimited: you’re not trading quality for price. You’re getting the full managed platform, but with the flexibility to host multiple sites on a single server plan.

And when a site grows… just spin it off

Now here’s where it gets fun.

If one of your sites needs more resources, just spin it off to a new Dedicated server. Easy. Use our migration tools or let our support team handle the move for you.

No messy migrations, no rebuilding environments, no “please support, can you move my site to a different node.”

Unlimited is your “many sites” plan. Dedicated is your “this one is taking off” plan. Use both as needed.

No long contracts. No renewal shocks.

Plus – unlike pretty much every other provider – you don’t need to pay for 48 months up front.

We go month by month.

You won’t get hit by a renewal that’s suddenly 4x the price once you’re locked in. And if you cancel a server halfway through the month… we’ll pro-rata refund you.

Try it. If you don’t like it, you get your money back.

Don’t believe us? Try it out – and if you don’t love it, we’ll refund you. No questions asked

One catch…

Unlimited is only available to WPMU DEV Premium members.

So if you’re already a Premium member – congrats, this is for you. And if not, why not give us a try (and remember: if you don’t love it, we’ll refund you, no questions asked).

Welcome to the next generation of WordPress hosting.

We think you’re going to love it.

WPMU DEV Premium Members can get started here.

To find out more about WPMU DEV Premium, click here.