Zach Stepek joined the Jukebox Podcast to talk about how partnerships, trust, and infrastructure shape the WordPress world. Calling himself a “unicorn,” Zach’s background spans ColdFusion, Flash, JavaScript, WordPress, WooCommerce, agency work, and hosting. He’s worked with organizations from IBM to MTV, spoken at WordCamps and WooConf, and moved between agencies and product teams. A viral WooCommerce project for a nonprofit and a talk at WordCamp Milwaukee helped link him to the WooCommerce team and pulled him deeper into the ecosystem.
Three interdependent pillars
Zach describes WordPress success as built on three interwoven pillars rather than a simple stack:
– Agencies and freelance builders who design, build, and maintain sites.
– Product companies producing themes and plugins that extend functionality.
– Hosting and infrastructure providers that deliver performance, reliability, and scale.
These three groups don’t sit one atop another; they’re tightly linked. Agencies rely on product companies’ tools and support; product teams rely on agencies to implement and return feedback; hosting underpins both by ensuring sites perform. A weakness in any pillar can ripple outward, harming sites and businesses.
Hosting: the foundation and a major revenue center
Zach likens hosting to retail real estate: location, capacity, and exposure matter. For e-commerce, hosting quality is especially consequential—every visitor might convert, and outages or poor performance directly cost revenue and erode trust. Hosting businesses often capture the largest part of ecosystem revenue and are in a unique position to bridge agencies and product vendors through partner programs, co-marketing, and shared investments.
Partnerships built on values and long-term thinking
Zach emphasizes partnerships that go beyond transactional exchanges. Real partnerships involve mutual care for partner teams, customers, and reputations. Revenue is important, but it’s a signal rather than the only measure of partnership health. Trust and relationship equity compound over time, delivering sustainable growth and social proof. Short-term, ROI-only decisions—often driven by investor pressure—can damage trust, harm brands, and weaken the broader ecosystem.
Open-source values versus investment-driven models
WordPress grew by community contribution, volunteer work, and a culture of sharing. As companies scale or take investment, pressure to chase short-term metrics can conflict with open-source stewardship. Partner programs that focus on collecting logos or transactional incentives instead of learning from and collaborating with agencies undermine community trust. Companies seen as extracting value without giving back face heightened scrutiny in the WordPress community.
Economic and infrastructure pressures shaping choices
Recent economic uncertainty and tighter budgets have led organizations to prioritize immediate ROI: fewer sponsorships, reduced event participation, and less volunteer time. Simultaneously, hosting is contending with rising costs and supply constraints—amplified by demand for AI infrastructure that needs GPUs and advanced cooling. These pressures make low-cost hosting models harder to sustain and push some teams toward protecting short-term revenue.
Measuring partnership outcomes beyond MRR
Zach urges looking at partnership success through broader, longer-term signals:
– Trust and the frequency of proactive, collaborative interactions between partners.
– Measurable customer outcomes tied to collaborative solutions.
– Long-term reputation, goodwill, and community standing.
These kinds of outcomes are harder to quantify than monthly recurring revenue, but they often produce more durable growth. Relationship equity frequently precedes and sustains financial gains, and it demands patience—something short-term pressures can erode.
Practical observations and constructive ideas
– Agencies often become product companies by building tools to solve client problems (examples include migration helpers or improved search solutions).
– Product teams that contribute to open source can receive valuable community feedback and contributions—ElasticPress was mentioned as a constructive example.
– Hosting companies have a responsibility and opportunity to support the ecosystem through meaningful, values-aligned partnerships rather than shallow programs.
– Recognizing community contributions—tracking contributor hours, badges, or visible metrics—could help make philanthropic or community investments more tangible to executives focused on ROI.
Final perspective
Partnerships in the WordPress ecosystem are slow-growing investments, not quick transactional wins. In a climate of economic pressure and shifting industry dynamics, organizations that prioritize long-term relationships, trust, and community stewardship are more likely to thrive than those focused only on immediate returns. Zach offers a gardener’s metaphor: plant a forest over time and everyone benefits from the growth.
Where to find Zach
Zach’s eCommerce consultancy and fractional partnership work: mightyswarm.com. Personal site: zachstepek.com. Social handle: @zstepek on major platforms.