Your beloved Kadence (WordPress theme) was already on life support back when StellarWP acquired Kadence in 2021.
Kadence was originally founded by Ben Ritner, a talented lovable human being who coded with passion. Creating solutions for the love of WordPress. And everyone could see it. In no time at all, Kadence theme quickly rose from nowhere to the top of all WordPress themes…emerging from a doghouse of giant contenders with years of authority, experience, and dominance in the WordPress theme space.
It’s no surprise Kadence was chosen for acquisition by Liquid Web (a hosting giant) to stash under its WordPress umbrella brand “StellarWP”. Kadence had so much brand value and brand trust. Years of diehard users who raved from every corner of the internet. Even non-Kadence users sung its praises, always admitting it a worthy “other option”. Used or not, everybody respected Kadence.
And then what happened?
Liquid Web acquired Kadence (and Kadence was never the same)
Whoops, did I say acquire? I meant EAT ITS F**KEN SOUL!
First came the textbook PR surprise announcement in 2021:
- Ben Ritner announces Kadence’s exciting new future with growth and support under Liquid Web (StellarWP). *cough* money transferred *cough*
- Liquid Web announces the proud addition of Kadence to its WP brands family. And Ben to its board of WP leadership.
- Ben and LW both publicly profess to Kadence’s ongoing development, and synergistic growth of all StellarWP brands under their new partnership.
- It was already an established pattern with LW/SWP having acquired other beloved brands (LearnDash, GiveWP, Restrict Content Pro, etc) around the same time. Many other original founders also kept on board to help guide their brands (and following).
Then came the inevitable split between original founders and new private equity owners. Either they quit on good terms, founders get paid and new owners get control. Or they quit on bad terms, founders vision and shareholders greed motives don’t align.
- Some years later, last fall 2025…Liquid Web lays off 25% (~36ppl) from the StellarWP team. In the months afterwards, Bet Ritner himself along with top members of other acquired brands (LearnDash, GiveWP, etc) voluntarily leave.
- Did you not see the writing on the wall when Ben left without a positive statement?!!!
- The best insider take I’ve read on the situation: Kadence Is Now Liquid Web: My Honest Take on the Rebrand (DIY Dream Site / Katy Boykin)
Did we not learn anything from Awesome Motive’s cancerous acquisitions of countless beloved plugins? Did we not learn anything from Oakley’s Capital’s acquisition of WHM/cPanel, or WP Engine of Genesis Framework?
All acquired brands were immediately exploited…PR congratulatory announcements (and loyalty promises), followed by degraded service and price hikes, and then finally taken off life-support the moment a superior profit model was theorized. It’s ALWAYS for profit.
This is what private equity does. This is the role of capitalism in open-source. It’s a bunch of shareholders loyal to their ROI and nothing else. They do not give a damn about WordPress, your site, or you. They want their goddamn money.
Do I even have to tell you where I think Kadence theme is going? Of course not, so stop wasting your time. Stop reading. And start trying new themes now! When even Liquid Web doesn’t see value in the Kadence brand anymore, neither should you.
Liquid Web sucks…
This is how I know.
I’ve had a crystal-ball headstart on Kadence’s eventual demise because I knew Liquid Web from wayyyyyy back. Big respected hosting company, was founded in 1997 and then acquired in 2015 (which was probably when it started going downhill). Quality of service and support was getting worse each time I heard about them. Meanwhile, prices were skyhigh.
I couldn’t complain, their degrading service sent many angry customers over to my webhosting business. <3
Then they went the full-blown marketing route.
Nothing evil with following market trends, but it’s the execution that I criticize. Liquid Web wasn’t able to retain customers on service quality/support alone. They had to do something drastic. I’m guessing their market research told them most websites today were built on WordPress platform.
And so they sought out to buy up authority & marketshare in the WordPress space. They shopped around, picking up beloved brands to weaponize under their own WordPress umbrella brand “StellarWP”. Following in the disgusting footsteps of (not so) Awesome Motive.
The end goal wasn’t hard to guess:
- Make profit-motivated “improvements” to each acquired product.
- Raise prices. Use the existing brand trust to acquire new customers under the raised prices.
- Cross-sell the brands to the each other’s existing user-base. Bundle them together into a package plan.
- Side-sell Liquid Web hosting plans to all users (their primary cash cow and true business).
And now we have the massive sh*tstorm that’s echoing around the WordPress world today.
- April 2026, after radio silence on many public forums regarding the recent lack of development, Liquid Web emerges with a not-so-shocking grand announcement…that StellarWP and many of its brands would be folded into 4 core products (Kadence being one of the retained names).
- Early and mid-May 2026 was full of sudden reveals upsetting the community. Many product websites taken down and now redirected to a Liquid Web page that resembled none of the old content, text, material, or brand assets. New product names, plans, and prices appeared. Users initially couldn’t log into their accounts, then later some could but still couldn’t see/access all their products.
- Liquid Web promised to restore access and be more transparent in future communication. But it honestly seems like they’re only reacting to the backlash. If anything, they probably hoped to get away with more.
So why are we shocked now?
When even Liquid Web’s core service/product kinda sucks. What did you think was gonna happen to everything else they acquired?
- Did you really think any product was going to improve?
- Did you really think they would honor lifetime plans?
- Did you really think they would improve anything without an expected ROI?
- How bad was their leadership that Ben Ritner decided to abandon his baby and jump ship?!
Oh, but Liquid Web has been “repairing the damage” now.
Some follow-up emails claiming they’ve already notified everyone ahead of time of the changes. And that they’re working hard to restore everyone’s access. Never mind that.
The real damage is already done:
- The original founder (Ben Ritner) who cared for and loved Kadence like his baby is gone.
- The respect that Liquid Web had for Kadence is also gone. Why else would they suddenly change its branding, public face, and plans & pricing? Kadence is just another cog in their profit-machine now. Nothing more.
- Liquid Web even killed off StellarWP. They ditched the name and shame of this failed experiment, and will now operate their WP scheme behind another public mask (Nexcess?).
- What little respect left for Liquid Web is also gone. They killed so many beloved brands. And doing so in a way that betrayed many customers. Annnnd while keeping secrets from the users! People are scared what Liquid Web will kill off next.
There’s no bright future left for Kadence. We don’t trust Liquid Web’s words now. And we won’t trust Liquid Web’s future promises either.
(And I personally never trusted the Kadence acquisition in the first place.) Ben sold out. He already collected his payout from all the LTD sales, then sold the business to someone else (essentially collecting double payment). Meanwhile LW still kept him on board, [I assume] incentivizing him with stock & leadership position for his loyalty. So basically…he gets paid, gets growth support, and still keeps “control”. You can’t blame him. It was a win-win-win situation for him.
Did you really expect Ben to keep working alone in a cut-throat theme market, building endless feature requests, for users that didn’t bring recurring revenue? The diehard early Kadence users were the least profitable (and yet the most demanding). The real money comes from the trend-followers…noobies who just buy whatever affiliate guides promote.
What’s the plan moving forward?
You don’t have to convert all sites off Kadence just yet.
It’s going to be plenty functional for at least a few years more. (Unless LW does some asshole move and locks out functionality without an active license.) But start researching alternative themes for your next projects. One that’s going to be around a long time for you to grow into. One with a founder who’s mission you believe in, and are happy contributing to their community.
The best replacements for Kadence theme:
- Neve – the most Kadence-like theme for me at the moment is Neve theme with its complementing Otter Blocks (Gutenberg block library). Great product, run by great people, with great customer support. Neve theme & Otter Blocks is the most comparable to Kadence theme & Kadence Blocks. Also has powerful free version to play with before upgrading. I actually have several posts in queue from 3 years ago featuring Otter Blocks…and I guess now’s the time to finish them.
- Blocksy & GeneratePress – both of these along with Kadence made up the top 3 WordPress themes of the recent years. Both similar to Kadence…same features, high-quality code, excellent usability, beautiful starter themes. Blocksy lacks a complementing Gutenberg block library but works well with 3rd-party block libraries, and has super-polished starter themes. GeneratePress has a complimenting block library called “GenerateBlocks” but the block library doesn’t have many options. Generally, GP/GB is more dev-approach to build from scratch whereas other themes are better-suited for non-devs. Just my 2 cents. Both of these have free & pro as well.
- Astra – Astra theme and its complementing Spectra blocks is also similar in theory. But really, I don’t trust their product quality…still buggy. Don’t be fooled by their giant user-adoption, it’s more a result of good marketing than actual product quality IMO. Plenty of complaints about them if you read around carefully.
- What about other options? I didn’t list others because these are already the best. Other ones are not polished enough, don’t have as big a user community, lacking key things, or too expensive.
- WPJohnny’s Top 7 WordPress Themes 2026 (my last post)
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