Tung Do otherwise known throughout the WordPress community as ‘Small Potato‘ is on a mission. That mission is as follows:
To create a more enjoyable and feature-packed service than WordPress.com. I’m not gunning for WP.com, but it’s the easiest way to explain what I’m going to build. And instead of re-inventing the wheel, I’ll use WP.com’s business model — freemium — as well.
In a recent blog post on DevPress.com, Tung Do outlines something akin to a business plan. While his personal project won’t be a direct WP.com competitor, he’ll use the freemimum model popularized by Automattic. The service will have one theme, not many although he mentions the possibility of child themes down the road. While the initial account will be free, there will be optional paid upgrades.
Tung Do’s follow up comment to his article is also worth reading to get a better idea about what he’ll be working on. While the hosting business is tough as nails, I think there is still room in that segment to succeed. I reached out to Tung to find out more about his project but he doesn’t want to go into details about something that doesn’t exist yet.
If you had any advice for Small Potato, what would you tell him?
Ugh. I was hoping you wouldn’t post this haha. Here comes a whole bunch of comments about me dreaming too big.
It’s an idea for a personal project that a publicized to put pressure on myself to see it through. I don’t believe I have the skills to complete everything, but I’ll try anyway.
As for business model, I was initially attracted to freemium because it’s easier to promote, but I hate spam and am not sure I can reinvest in hosting fast enough to provide a reliable service so I’m actually leaning toward charging an entry fee.
An entry fee helps server costs and prevents this project from negatively affecting my current site members who actually signed up for self hosted products, not managed hosting.