WooCommerce Devs: Grow Your Plugin Business on WPBay

Creating high-quality plugins is only half the battle. The real challenge lies in gaining visibility for your product, generating traffic, and capturing value in a sustainable way – ideally through recurring, stable revenue. As any developer knows, building an excellent product often isn’t enough without effective marketing behind it.

This challenge is particularly acute for smaller developers who lack a large audience or the resources to invest heavily in marketing and sales infrastructure. Many turn to marketplaces as a solution, only to find these platforms are often uncompetitive, imposing restrictive terms and limitations that can effectively hold developers hostage through one-sided agreements.

That’s why we’ve created WPBay: a developer-first marketplace designed as a genuine alternative. We offer a real solution with low commission rates, flexible licensing and pricing options, non-exclusivity, and powerful developer tools.

With WPBay, you can finally sell your plugins and themes on your own terms, maintaining control while reaching the audience you deserve.

The Developer’s Dilemma

As a WooCommerce developer selling your first plugin or theme, what options do you have?

-> Build your own platform from scratch, handling everything from sales and checkout to billing, marketing, auto-updates, tax exemptions, and EU VAT compliance.

Pros: Complete control
Cons: Significant time investment, technical overhead, marketing challenges

-> Join established marketplaces like WooCommerce.com or Envato

Pros: Built-in audience, handles infrastructure
Cons: High commissions, restrictive policies and options (more on this on below)

Today, I want to introduce you to a better alternative: WPBay.com, a developer-focused marketplace designed specifically for WP plugin and theme creators.

Why Revenue Models Matter for Woo Devs

For some developers, decisions about selling subscriptions versus lifetime licenses, or offering unlimited versus single-site options, might seem like afterthoughts. In today’s rapidly evolving environment, however, these choices are critical to your business success.

WooCommerce is changing rapidly – consider the introduction of HPOS, cart and checkout blocks, and other major updates. These changes require constant product maintenance to ensure compatibility and optimal performance for your customers’ sites. Additionally, users expect rapid solutions to issues and responsive support. Relying solely on one-time purchases without recurring revenue from subscriptions can put you in a precarious position during periods of low sales.

Conversely, lifetime products offer the advantage of capturing value upfront. If given the choice between receiving $600 over three years or immediately, capturing it upfront clearly provides greater value, especially considering that subscriptions inevitably experience some churn. The main problem with this is that in most cases customers are not ready to make a large purchase outright, and often prefer to first test a yearly plan.

The Best of Both Worlds

WPBay proposes that developers can enjoy the best of both worlds. This hybrid model, already employed by many successful WooCommerce plugins, gives customers a choice between annual subscriptions and lifetime purchases.

How the hybrid model works:

Subscriptions build a recurring revenue base that provides stability
Lifetime options serve as price anchors (making subscriptions appear as excellent value)
You capture significant value upfront from lifetime purchases
You appeal to different customer preferences, budgets and commitment levels

Limitations with Existing Marketplaces

Envato Limitations

No subscription options: immediately introduces uncertainty into your WooCommerce business
No multi-site licenses: customers often purchase single-site licenses but deploy across multiple sites
No license verification system: difficult to enforce proper usage

Some would say that recurring revenue does not matter as long as new customers keep coming in. However, when you have mortgage payments or school tuition to cover, the certainty of tomorrow’s earnings becomes crucial.

WooCommerce.com Limitations

Lower commission rates: developers receive 70% from each sale
No multi-site license options: cannot offer 3-site, 5-site, or unlimited site licenses
No lifetime purchase options: limits value capture and customer choice

Why WPBay Stands Out

We built WPBay to get around all of these issues and offer the best options for developers across the board.

With industry-leading commission rates of up to 88% on every sale, WPBay significantly outperforms competitor platforms. You can offer both subscriptions for predictable income and lifetime licenses to capture maximum upfront value—creating the balanced revenue model used by many successful plugin businesses.

The platform’s flexible licensing system lets you configure custom license tiers (single site, multi-site, or unlimited). This helps you capture full value from all kinds of customers, whether they’re individual developers or agencies managing many sites. Since WPBay has no exclusivity requirements, you’re free to use it in addition to other platforms to boost exposure and visibility for your products.

WPBay’s dual pricing model also naturally segments your market and maximizes conversions. Subscription offerings appear more affordable when presented alongside lifetime options, while ownership-focused customers find lifetime licenses more appealing.

And that’s not all! WPBay has built-in developer tools that make your life easier:

Powerful SDK enables automatic updates for your plugins and themes
Seamless licensing and purchase validation system
Simple to use API for common operations like purchase code verification

Become a Seller on WPBay

For WooCommerce developers looking to grow their plugin or theme business with more flexible options and higher earning potential, WPBay offers a compelling alternative to traditional marketplaces.

It’s simple to get started! Just sign up for a seller account, upload your products, set up license options and pricing, and you’re ready to go!