AI is making software easier to build. But when everyone can create a website, launch a SaaS product, or automate a workflow, what will customers still pay for?
The answer may be less about building and more about what happens afterward.
Software companies should focus on helping customers acquire users, generate revenue, automate operations, and retain customers. As AI lowers the barrier to creating software, the opportunity is to move beyond selling individual features and help makers build sustainable businesses.
This is not a prediction that software buyers are disappearing. It is a strategic question about what happens when more products compete for customers’ limited attention and budgets.
For SaaS founders, indie makers, WordPress product companies, and software product leaders, this shift deserves serious attention.
Not long ago, building a software product required considerable investment in development, design, infrastructure, and technical expertise.
A founder with a product idea might need to hire developers, find a technical co-founder, or spend months learning to code before launching a minimum viable product (MVP).
AI is changing that process.
A solo founder can use AI coding assistants to create a prototype. A freelancer can deliver websites faster. A marketer can build landing pages without waiting for a developer. Small teams can experiment with product ideas that previously required more resources.
The result is a lower barrier to creation.
But easier production does not automatically create more demand.
Imagine a market where hundreds of founders launch AI-powered writing tools, website builders, automation products, or niche SaaS applications. Each product may solve a slightly different problem, but customers still have limited time, budgets, and patience.
As the number of available solutions grows, customers have more alternatives. Basic features become easier to reproduce, and differentiation becomes harder.
The ability to build software is becoming less valuable on its own, while the ability to deliver a meaningful outcome remains valuable.
This distinction matters. The opportunity is not necessarily disappearing demand. It is increasing competition for customer attention, trust, and spending.
For a broader perspective on how AI is changing software businesses, see Andreessen Horowitz’s research, The AI Application Spending Report: Where Startup Dollars Really Go.
When one part of a process becomes easier, another constraint often becomes more important.
In the AI economy, building may no longer be the biggest obstacle for many software makers. The harder problems often emerge after the product exists.
Consider five challenges.
These challenges require different capabilities.
A developer can build an excellent application without knowing how to reach its target audience. A marketer can generate traffic without converting visitors into customers. A founder can acquire initial customers but struggle to retain them.
A working product is only the beginning of a business.
This creates an opportunity for software companies. Instead of focusing exclusively on helping people create something, they can help customers overcome the obstacles that stand between creation and commercial success.
For years, software companies have sold capabilities.
Page builders sell design flexibility. Form plugins sell form creation. Booking plugins sell scheduling. SEO tools sell optimization features.
These capabilities still matter. Customers need functional products, and good execution remains important.
However, when competing products can reproduce similar features more easily, feature lists become less persuasive as a basis for differentiation.
Consider two offers.
Offer A: A landing page builder
Create beautiful, responsive landing pages without coding.
Offer B: A launch and conversion toolkit
Create a landing page, capture leads, qualify prospects, book sales calls, and measure conversions through an integrated workflow.
Both offers may include a page builder. But the second connects the product to a larger customer problem.
The difference is not necessarily the underlying technology. It is how the capabilities are packaged, delivered, and connected to a business outcome.
This does not mean every software company should become an all-in-one platform. A broad product suite can introduce complexity and make a product harder to maintain.
The better question is whether the company can help customers complete an important job with less effort, fewer disconnected tools, or a more reliable result.
Product leaders should ask:
These questions can reveal better product opportunities than adding another feature simply because it is technically possible.
Consider a typical WordPress product company that sells website-building tools, form plugins, booking solutions, and e-commerce extensions.
Its opportunity is not necessarily to abandon its existing products or compete directly with every AI coding platform.
Instead, it can use its existing strengths to solve the problems that makers encounter after they start building.
Here are five opportunities worth exploring.
Many makers can build a product but struggle to turn it into a business.
They need landing pages, pricing pages, lead capture forms, demo booking, onboarding workflows, and conversion tracking. These requirements are often handled through separate tools and disconnected processes.
A WordPress product company could package existing capabilities into a toolkit designed for people launching SaaS products, digital services, and online businesses.
Potential components include:
For example, WordPress form-building tools can already support use cases such as online product order forms. A broader launch toolkit could connect form submission with lead qualification, booking, follow-up, and conversion measurement.
The value proposition would not simply be “build a website faster.”
It would be “launch your business website and turn visitors into potential customers.”
Customers would be purchasing a practical starting point for acquiring customers, rather than just another collection of design components.
Not every maker wants to build a SaaS company. Some want to earn money by delivering services to other businesses.
AI-assisted developers, WordPress freelancers, and small agencies can create websites faster. Their challenge is delivering consistent quality, managing clients, and handling more projects without increasing their workload at the same rate.
A product company could explore an agency-focused toolkit that combines reusable templates, client intake forms, booking, payment workflows, and multi-site licensing.
The goal would be to help agencies deliver projects faster and create repeatable service packages.
For example, an agency could develop a standard package for local service businesses. Each project could reuse a proven website structure, lead capture forms, appointment booking, and customer follow-up integrations.
Instead of assembling every website from scratch, the agency could focus more on client requirements and business outcomes.
This segment is attractive because agencies can reuse the same capabilities across multiple client projects. The value is not limited to a single website.
It also creates an opportunity to offer commercial packages designed around professional usage rather than relying exclusively on individual website owners.
Building a product is only useful if potential customers can find it.
Makers need to improve their search visibility, publish useful content, establish credibility, and understand how people discover their products.
A software company could explore tools and workflows that help WordPress businesses improve technical SEO, structure content, monitor search performance, and prepare their websites for AI-powered discovery.
Potential capabilities include:
Google’s official guide to optimizing for generative AI features in Search explains how established SEO practices remain relevant to AI search visibility. It also emphasizes the importance of useful, distinctive content.
However, this opportunity needs careful positioning.
No tool can guarantee that a brand will appear in an AI-generated answer. Search visibility also depends on factors outside a single plugin’s control.
A more defensible offer would help customers improve measurable aspects of discoverability and understand their performance across available search channels.
For makers with limited marketing budgets, a practical toolkit that reduces the complexity of organic acquisition could be valuable.
The AI maker economy includes more than software founders.
It includes consultants, educators, coaches, creators, and independent professionals who want to monetize their knowledge and audiences.
Many do not need a complex technology stack. They need a simple way to sell digital products, accept bookings, collect payments, deliver services, and manage customers.
A WordPress product company could create ready-made solutions for specific business models.
For example, a consultant could use a preconfigured system for service pages, consultation booking, lead capture, and payment collection.
An educator could use a different package for course sales, membership access, and customer onboarding.
The advantage is specificity.
Instead of asking users to assemble a website from dozens of features, a company could provide a solution designed around a particular business model.
The initial audience should be chosen carefully. A product for consultants may require different integrations and support than one designed for course creators.
There is another group of customers that may be even more attractive: businesses that already have visitors, leads, and customers.
These businesses do not necessarily need another way to build a website. They need to improve what their existing website produces.
A product company could explore solutions for recovering abandoned forms, improving checkout flows, simplifying lead follow-up, measuring conversion performance, and identifying friction in customer journeys.
These problems have a direct connection to revenue.
A business owner may hesitate to buy another design plugin. But a solution that demonstrably recovers lost leads or improves conversion rates has a clearer financial rationale.
For example, a service business might receive dozens of inquiries but struggle to respond quickly. A better workflow could route inquiries, notify the right person, and trigger a follow-up when a lead has not received a response.
The challenge is proving the result. It is important to distinguish between features that merely display analytics and capabilities that help customers identify and fix problems.
This opportunity may also provide a stronger foundation for recurring revenue if customers continue to receive value from monitoring, automation, and optimization.
The five opportunities share a common principle. They help customers progress beyond the initial act of building.
I call this the Maker Value Shift: a proposed strategic model for thinking about how software companies can support customers throughout the journey from an idea to a sustainable business.
The model has four stages.
Build the website, application, or digital product.
AI tools, WordPress plugins, templates, and development platforms make this stage easier.
Reach the right audience and attract potential customers.
This requires positioning, distribution, search visibility, lead generation, and trust.
Convert demand into revenue.
Customers may need pricing pages, checkout flows, booking, onboarding, and conversion optimization.
Deliver ongoing value, improve customer experience, and operate more efficiently.
This may require automation, customer communication, analytics, and repeatable workflows.
The opportunity for software companies is to help customers progress through more of this journey rather than competing exclusively on the first stage.
This does not mean one company must build every capability. A product can focus on a specific stage and integrate well with the rest of the customer’s technology stack.
The important point is to understand the larger outcome the customer is trying to achieve.
Helping makers build successful businesses is only half the challenge. Software companies must also help users understand a product, trust its value, and make progress without unnecessary friction.
This is where IEATO comes in.
I developed IEATO as a product-led framework for understanding how users move from intent to a meaningful outcome in an environment shaped by AI-driven discovery and changing customer expectations.
IEATO stands for:
The framework is particularly relevant when AI makes it easier to create competing products.
A maker may be able to build an application quickly, but that does not mean users will understand its value, trust its claims, or pay for it.
Consider a founder launching an AI-powered SaaS product. A landing page may explain the features and attract visitors, yet conversions may remain low because users do not understand how the product fits their workflow, whether it solves their specific problem, or what results they can expect.
Adding more features may not solve that problem.
An IEATO-based approach would examine whether the product matches user intent, provides a clear experience, answers important questions, establishes trust, and helps users reach a meaningful outcome.
This changes the product development question from “What else should we build?” to “What prevents users from understanding, trusting, and benefiting from what we have already built?”
It also creates a practical connection to the Maker Value Shift.
The Maker Value Shift identifies the broader journey from creation to sustainable growth. IEATO helps product teams examine the quality of the experience within that journey, especially where users hesitate or fail to progress.
For software companies, this means that creating value is not enough. They must communicate that value clearly, deliver it consistently, and help customers experience it.
You can read more about the framework in my IEATO funnel analysis tool and my article on product-led foundations and AI-era distribution.
The central lesson is simple: when building becomes easier, the quality of the product experience becomes an even more important part of differentiation.
One of the biggest strategic mistakes would be to treat all makers as a single market.
Someone who builds websites as a hobby has different needs and purchasing behavior from someone who runs a web development agency.
A SaaS founder has different priorities from a consultant selling services. An established online business has different expectations from a first-time creator.
| Customer segment | Primary goal | Potential product opportunity |
|---|---|---|
| Hobbyist makers | Build and experiment cheaply | Free tools and entry-level bundles |
| SaaS founders | Acquire customers and grow revenue | Launch, lead generation, and conversion toolkit |
| Freelancers and agencies | Deliver client projects efficiently | Agency operating kit and multi-site licensing |
| Creators and consultants | Monetize knowledge and services | Creator business kit |
| Established businesses | Improve conversion and retention | Growth and recovery toolkit |
These segments are hypotheses, not verified estimates of market size or willingness to pay.
The distinction matters because product usage does not automatically translate into commercial demand.
A hobbyist may prefer a free alternative and move on to the next project. An agency owner may pay for a tool that saves several hours every week. A business may invest in a solution that improves a measurable part of its sales process.
The strongest customer is not necessarily the person who builds the most.
It may be the person who has a recurring problem, understands its cost, and has a financial reason to solve it.
Software companies should prioritize the segments where they can deliver meaningful value and earn sustainable revenue, rather than chasing every new maker entering the market.
My recommendation is to start with the existing portfolio.
Launching an entirely new platform introduces additional development costs, support requirements, positioning challenges, and customer acquisition expenses.
An established product company may already have capabilities that support several of these use cases.
The first step should be to identify which combinations of existing products solve a complete customer problem.
For example, a SaaS launch package could combine landing page components, forms, booking, and relevant integrations.
An agency package could emphasize reusable templates, multi-site usage, and repeatable client workflows.
These packages should offer more than discounted licenses. They should include relevant templates, clear instructions, preconfigured workflows, and a straightforward path to the intended result.
The company can then test whether customers will pay for the packaged outcome.
If customers consistently request a missing capability, that provides evidence for what to build next.
This approach reduces the risk of investing in a new product based on an attractive idea rather than demonstrated demand.
It also helps distinguish between three opportunities:
The order matters. Start with the lowest-cost way to solve the problem, then invest as the evidence becomes stronger.
The strategy should begin with customer validation, not a large product development project.
Interview potential customers across three segments: AI SaaS founders, WordPress agencies, and independent business owners.
Ask what they are trying to accomplish, where they get stuck, which tools they already pay for, and what they have attempted to solve themselves.
Look for problems that are frequent, costly, and poorly served by existing solutions.
Deliverable: One defined customer segment, one specific problem, and a clear hypothesis about why customers would pay to solve it.
Create a landing page for the most promising offer. Demonstrate the solution using existing products and simple integrations.
Offer a paid pilot to qualified prospects.
Measure actual purchases rather than relying on survey responses, compliments, or waitlist registrations.
Deliverable: Initial evidence of willingness to pay and a clearer understanding of the features customers value most.
Help early customers use the package to achieve the intended result.
Measure activation, time to first result, repeat usage, support requests, and customer feedback.
Identify which parts of the experience create value and which parts introduce unnecessary complexity.
Deliverable: Evidence that customers can use the solution and receive meaningful value from it.
Evaluate paid conversion, customer acquisition costs, contribution margins, usage, and renewal intent.
A small number of paying customers does not establish product-market fit. However, evidence that customers pay, use the solution, achieve results, and want to continue is a stronger foundation for investment than a large number of free users.
Deliverable: A scale, revise, or stop decision based on customer behavior and commercial evidence.
The goal is not to launch another product within 90 days at any cost. It is to discover which customer problem deserves a dedicated product, a recurring service, or a better commercial package.
AI is changing the economics of creation, but it does not eliminate the need for product strategy.
In fact, easier creation makes some strategic decisions more important.
Choose customers carefully. A large audience of makers is not necessarily a large market of paying customers.
Differentiate through outcomes. Basic functionality may become easier to reproduce. Reliable execution, workflow integration, and measurable customer value can provide stronger reasons to choose a product.
Build around real problems. Do not add AI features simply because competitors are doing so. Identify where customers experience friction and determine whether AI can solve it meaningfully.
Use existing strengths. Companies with established products, customers, and distribution may have an advantage in packaging solutions for known problems instead of starting from scratch.
Validate willingness to pay. Interest, usage, and positive feedback are useful signals, but they are not substitutes for commercial evidence.
These principles apply beyond WordPress. SaaS companies, no-code platforms, AI application developers, and digital service providers face the same fundamental question: How can they create differentiated value when more people can build competing products?
For more about my work in SaaS and WordPress product growth, I focus on connecting product positioning, search demand, customer acquisition, and conversion rather than treating traffic as the final goal.
Software companies should focus on problems that remain difficult after creation, such as customer acquisition, conversion optimization, workflow automation, and customer retention. The best opportunity depends on the target customer and the company’s existing strengths.
AI may reduce demand for some products by making their features easier to reproduce. It can also create demand for new applications, specialized workflows, and AI-enabled services. The overall effect depends on customer needs, competition, and the value each product delivers.
WordPress product companies can combine existing plugins and capabilities into solutions for specific business needs, such as lead generation, online sales, agency workflows, and conversion optimization. They can also use AI to improve their own products where it provides clear customer value.
It should validate customer demand first. Improving existing products or packaging them into a paid solution may be less risky than developing a new product without evidence of willingness to pay. New development makes sense when a validated problem cannot be solved adequately with current capabilities.
The Maker Value Shift is a proposed strategic model that describes four stages of business growth: create, acquire, monetize, and retain and scale. It encourages software companies to help customers progress beyond building a product toward creating a sustainable business.
The AI boom will create more makers, more products, and more competition. Some will build successful businesses. Others will struggle to find customers, differentiate their products, or generate sustainable revenue.
That creates an opportunity for software companies willing to solve the problems beyond creation.
When everyone can build, customers need more than tools that help them build.
They need ways to reach the right audience, convert interest into revenue, operate efficiently, and retain customers.
The most important question for product leaders may no longer be:
“What can we help our customers build?”
It may be:
“What can we help our customers achieve after they have built it?”
The Maker Value Shift is a proposed strategic model for this article, not an established academic framework. The product opportunities described above are hypotheses to validate with customers, not claims of proven market demand. Links to third-party products and research are provided for context, not as endorsements.
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