Zach Stepek joins the Jukebox Podcast to discuss partnerships, trust, and the interconnected nature of the WordPress ecosystem. A self-described “unicorn,” Zach’s career spans ColdFusion, Flash, JavaScript, WordPress, WooCommerce, agency work, and hosting. He’s worked with organisations from IBM to MTV, spoken at WordCamps and WooConf, and contributed across agencies and product companies. His path into WordPress included supporting a viral WooCommerce site for a nonprofit and speaking at WordCamp Milwaukee, which led to a long-term connection with the WooCommerce team.
Three interconnected pillars
Zach frames WordPress success as dependent on three interlocking pillars:
– Agencies or individual builders who create and maintain sites.
– Product companies (themes and plugins) that extend WordPress functionality.
– Hosting and infrastructure providers that ensure performance and reliability.
These pillars function less like a layer cake and more like a Celtic knot—interwoven and mutually dependent. Agencies need product companies’ tools and support; product companies need agencies to implement and feedback; hosting must provide the infrastructure that enables both to thrive. Weakness in any part can cascade across the whole site or business.
Hosting as foundation and revenue driver
Hosting acts like choosing retail real estate: location, capacity, and exposure matter. For e-commerce, hosting quality is especially critical—every visitor can be a sale, and downtime or poor performance directly harms revenue and customer trust. Hosting companies often command the largest revenue share in the ecosystem and are uniquely positioned to foster partnerships between agencies and product companies through partner programs and shared investments.
Partnerships: values, trust, and the long game
Zach emphasises values-driven partnerships over purely transactional relationships. True partnerships invest in mutual success, caring about partner teams, customers, and reputation. Revenue is important, but it’s a signal, not the whole story. Trust and relationship equity compound over time and produce sustainable growth and social proof. Short-term, ROI-only thinking—often driven by investors or private equity seeking quick returns—can erode trust, damage brand reputation, and undermine the ecosystem.
The tension between open-source community values and investment-driven business models
WordPress grew through substantial volunteer work, community contributions, and a culture of sharing. As companies scale or accept outside investment, the pressure to prioritise short-term metrics can conflict with open-source stewardship. When companies focus narrowly on transactional partner programs (e.g., collecting logos or affiliate payments) rather than truly learning and collaborating with partners, the ecosystem weakens. Community perception matters: companies perceived as extracting value without giving back face harsher scrutiny from the WordPress community.
Economic and infrastructure pressures shaping decisions
Economic uncertainty and recent recessions have led many organisations to tighten belts and prioritise immediate ROI. Sponsorships and event participation have declined, altering community dynamics. At the same time, hosting faces rising component costs and supply constraints—partly driven by demand from large AI workloads requiring substantial GPU and cooling infrastructure. These pressures make low-cost hosting models harder to sustain and push some businesses toward guarding short-term revenue.
Measuring partnership success beyond immediate revenue
Zach argues for broader signals of partnership health:
– Trust and frequency of proactive collaboration between partners.
– Better customer outcomes attributable to hosted partnerships.
– Long-term reputation and community goodwill.
Such outcomes are harder to quantify than MRR or ARR yet often produce more durable growth. Relationship equity precedes and sustains revenue; cultivating it requires patience—something that fear and short-term pressure often undermine.
Practical observations and hope for the future
– Agencies sometimes become product companies by solving needs encountered in client work (examples include tools to ease migrations or improve search).
– Product companies that contribute open-source tools can benefit from community feedback and contributions (ElasticPress was cited as a positive example).
– Hosting companies have an opportunity—and responsibility—to support the ecosystem by fostering meaningful, values-aligned partnerships.
– Recognition of contributions (e.g., contributor hours, badges, visible metrics) could help align philanthropic community work with corporate ROI thinking, making long-term investments more tangible to decision-makers.
Final thoughts
Partnerships in WordPress are complex, slow-growing investments rather than quick transactional wins. In a time of economic pressure and changing industry dynamics, companies that prioritise long-term relationships, trust, and community stewardship will likely fare better than those focused solely on immediate ROI. Zach encourages thinking like gardeners planting a forest—investing over time so the whole ecosystem grows and benefits everyone.
Where to find Zach
Zach’s eCommerce consultancy and fractional partnership work are at mightyswarm.com. His personal site is zachstepek.com, and he uses the handle zstepek across major social platforms.
