Translating your WordPress website into multiple languages is one of the easiest ways to reach a wider audience, boost your SEO traffic, and increase your sales.

But with so many translation plugins available, choosing the right one can feel overwhelming. TranslatePress and WPML are established plugins with years of proven history, while Universally is a newer plugin that takes a different, more modern approach to translation.

I’ve tested all three on real WordPress sites. In this ultimate comparison, I’ll walk you through how they stack up on setup, translation quality, SEO, performance, WooCommerce support, customer support, and pricing so you can choose the right one for your business.

Plugin	Best For	Starting Price
TranslatePress	Visual editing, data ownership, flat-fee pricing	Free core; from €99/yr
WPML	Developers, WooCommerce stores, agencies	From €39/yr
Universally	Fastest setup, cloud performance, budget-conscious sites	Free; from $7.50/mo

For more information on each plugin, see our detailed WPML and Universally reviews and our guide to using TranslatePress.

If you’re also considering free or lower-cost alternatives, Polylang is worth a look. We cover it in our roundup of the best WordPress translation plugins.

My comparison covers seven criteria. You can use the quick links below to jump to any section:

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Ease of Setup

Translating your WordPress site into multiple languages should be as painless as possible. Two of these tools can get you live in another language in under 10 minutes.

The third takes considerably more work, so it’s worth understanding what’s involved before you commit. Below, I break down how each tool handles setup.

TranslatePress – Ease of Setup

The TranslatePress setup is simpler than WPML’s. You install the plugin from WordPress.org, select your languages in the settings, and the front-end translation editor becomes available immediately (with no API key required).

From there, you click ‘Translate Site’ in the WordPress admin bar and start clicking on any text element on your live page to translate it. There are no backend spreadsheets and no separate dashboard.

One thing to know upfront: automatic language detection (showing visitors a prompt to switch to their preferred language) requires the Business plan at €199/year (~$230 USD).

On the Personal plan, you can add a language switcher, but visitors choose the language themselves.

WPML – Ease of Setup

WPML requires more up-front configuration than both the other plugins. The Multilingual CMS plan requires at minimum two separate plugin components: WPML core for your posts and pages, and String Translation for your theme, plugin, and widget text.

Each component has its own setup wizard, and translations don’t happen automatically. You trigger them page by page, or enable ‘Translate Everything’ mode and configure how your automatic translation credits are spent.

In my testing, even translating a straightforward site took the better part of an hour. On a larger site with a complex theme or custom post types, plan for more time still.

That complexity exists for a reason. WPML gives you a level of granular control that TranslatePress and Universally don’t offer. But if you don’t need that level of control, the overhead isn’t worth it.

Universally – Ease of Setup

Universally surprised me with how little it asks of you. Just install the plugin, paste your API key from the Universally dashboard, and choose your target languages. That’s the entire process.

The language switcher appears on your site automatically. There’s no shortcode to place, no template editing, and no per-page translation to trigger.

Language detection, SEO configuration, and switcher positioning all happen without any additional setup. That means most sites are live in another language in under 10 minutes.

Winner for Ease of Setup: Universally

Universally is the fastest by a clear margin, and TranslatePress is a solid second. The visual editor is intuitive and setup is much simpler than WPML’s, but it’s not quite as instant as Universally’s API-key flow.

For most site owners who want to get started without spending an afternoon on configuration, Universally or TranslatePress is the better choice. WPML’s setup overhead is only worth it if you specifically need the depth it provides.

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Translation Quality

Machine translation has improved significantly, and all three of these tools produce readable output for most language pairs. Where they differ is in how you fix errors and how much editorial control you have over the final result.

TranslatePress – Translation Quality

TranslatePress uses a combination of large language models and neural machine translation engines. It automatically selects the best approach for each language pair and content type.

All paid plans include TranslatePress AI with varying word allowances. DeepL (a highly accurate premium AI translation engine) integration is available on Business and Developer plans for users who prefer it.

What sets TranslatePress apart from both alternatives is the front-end visual editor, which is available on every plan including free.

You can click directly on any text element on your live page and type the corrected translation in the sidebar. The page updates in real time as you type.

Translation Memory is also included on all plans and applies existing translations automatically to new strings with at least 95% similarity, which means you’re not re-translating the same content repeatedly.

WPML – Translation Quality

WPML takes a fundamentally different approach: it’s manual by default, meaning you control every translated string.

Machine translation is available as a paid add-on through DeepL, Google Translate, and Microsoft Azure Translator. Credits are included with CMS and Agency plans, and the workflow is built around human review rather than publishing AI translated output directly.

The Advanced Translation Editor gives professional translators a side-by-side editing interface with Translation Memory (which reuses previous translations for repeated strings) and a reviewer role for quality-checking before publication.

If translation accuracy is mission-critical for legal content, medical information, or anything where a mistranslation has real consequences, WPML’s manual-first workflow is built for that.

Universally – Translation Quality

Universally uses custom AI models trained specifically for web content rather than general-purpose language models. That specialization helps it maintain brand voice and context rather than substituting word for word.

Universally reports approximately 90–95% accuracy across most language pairs.

The Glossary (available on all paid plans) lets you lock brand names, product terms, or any phrase that needs to be rendered a specific way. That rule is then applied everywhere across your site automatically.

Beyond the Glossary, Universally is designed to be largely hands-off. The goal is accurate translations on the first pass, so you spend less time correcting them.

Dedicated editing tools, including a dashboard text editor and a live visual editor, are on the roadmap for users who want finer control, but they aren’t available just yet.

Winner for Translation Quality: Tie — Universally and TranslatePress

Universally and TranslatePress both produce fantastic translations, but they win for different reasons.

If you want to publish AI translations as-is and rarely touch them, then Universally is the winner. Because its custom AI models are trained specifically for web content, it does a superior job of maintaining your brand voice and context right out of the box without requiring manual fixes.

However, the moment you want to do extensive manual editing, TranslatePress is the winner. Its click-to-correct visual editor is a massive practical advantage that makes tweaking translations incredibly easy.

WPML remains in a different category: it’s designed for professional translator pipelines and mission-critical content, not typical WordPress publishing.

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Multilingual SEO

Publishing in multiple languages only helps if search engines can find and index those pages correctly.

All three tools cover the technical SEO basics, but there are meaningful differences in what’s included automatically and what’s gated behind higher-tier plans.

TranslatePress – Multilingual SEO

The SEO Pack addon is included in all TranslatePress paid plans, starting with Personal (€99/year or ~$115 USD).

It handles hreflang tags, multilingual XML sitemaps, translated meta titles and descriptions, image alt text, Open Graph metadata, and translated URL slugs.

The x-default hreflang tag (which tells search engines which language version of your site to show when none of your available languages match a visitor’s preference) is configurable in TranslatePress’s advanced settings.

URL slug translation is also available on all paid tiers without needing to upgrade. Some competing tools charge significantly more for the same feature.

Plus, TranslatePress works with Yoast SEO, Rank Math, AIOSEO, SEOPress, and Slim SEO for multilingual sitemaps.

WPML – Multilingual SEO

WPML’s dedicated SEO addon is included in its Multilingual CMS and Agency plans.

This addon covers everything: hreflang tags in XML sitemaps, the x-default hreflang tag (which tells Google which version to serve when no language match exists), translated URL slugs on all plans, and per-language meta titles and descriptions.

Additionally, deep compatibility with AIOSEO and Yoast SEO means all your SEO plugin fields are automatically included in the translation workflow. But there is one caveat: Yoast SEO Premium’s Redirects feature is not compatible with WPML.

Universally – Multilingual SEO

Universally handles the full multilingual SEO stack automatically.

Hreflang tags, translated meta titles and descriptions, multilingual XML sitemaps, schema.org structured data, and RTL (Right to Left) language support for languages like Arabic or Hebrew all activate the moment you add a language, with no manual configuration needed.

This is one of Universally’s genuine strengths: you get solid multilingual SEO without ever opening an SEO settings page.

It also generates schema.org markup for you out of the box, which is handy, since with TranslatePress or WPML you’d typically rely on your SEO plugin (like AIOSEO or Yoast) to add structured data. Just keep in mind that schema is general SEO rather than a multilingual feature on its own.

Winner for Multilingual SEO: Tie — WPML and TranslatePress

Both WPML and TranslatePress cover the full technical SEO stack on all paid tiers, including x-default hreflang and translated URL slugs, with no plan upgrades required.

Universally handles the international SEO essentials automatically, but it currently lacks the deep, granular control over x-default tags and native URL slug translations found in WPML and TranslatePress.

If you’re already committed to Yoast or AIOSEO for your SEO workflow, then both WPML and TranslatePress integrate cleanly with either tool.

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Performance and Site Speed

Site speed matters for both SEO and conversions. And adding multiple languages can slow things down if your translation plugin isn’t built efficiently.

These three tools take fundamentally different architectural approaches to storing and serving translated content.

TranslatePress – Performance and Site Speed

Like WPML, TranslatePress stores translations directly in your WordPress database. The same database weight issue applies as your content grows.

One practical upside: Translation Memory means each unique string is only translated once (API calls happen once per string). After the first visit in a new language, every subsequent visitor gets the cached database version with no additional processing.

And because your translations live in your own database, your site keeps working even if the TranslatePress service goes offline or you cancel your subscription.

WPML – Performance and Site Speed

WPML stores translations in your WordPress database as duplicate entries for each language. In my testing, I found that this added around 0.3–0.5 seconds on sites without caching enabled.

A quality caching plugin brings most of that back, but the database weight compounds over time. On a site with hundreds of posts translated into multiple languages, the overhead becomes harder to ignore even with good caching in place.

Universally – Performance and Site Speed

Universally serves translated content from a global CDN with 200+ edge locations and writes nothing to your WordPress database. Your site’s database stays the same size regardless of how many languages you add.

One setup step worth doing: configure your caching plugin to serve different cache files per language. Most popular options like WP Rocket handle this with a simple toggle. It’s a one-time task, but it’s not automatic out of the box.

Because Universally runs on the cloud, your translations are stored on its servers and synced automatically, so there’s nothing to maintain and nothing weighing down your own database. As with any cloud service, your translated pages stay live for as long as your subscription is active.

Winner for Performance and Site Speed: Universally

Universally wins on performance, and it’s not particularly close. The combination of global CDN delivery and zero database writes gives it a real advantage over both TranslatePress and WPML, which both bloat your database over time.

If site speed is a top priority and you’re comfortable with cloud-hosted translations, then Universally’s approach is the easier one.

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WooCommerce Support

Running a WooCommerce store in multiple languages is more complex than translating a standard site.

Unlike a blog or informational page, a WooCommerce store has moving parts (dynamic cart messages, checkout error notices, and automated order confirmation emails) that all need to display correctly in each customer’s language.

If a customer browses your store in Spanish but receives an automated order receipt in English, it can cause confusion and seriously damage brand trust.

Not every plugin handles all of that equally well, which makes this one of the most important sections if you run an online store.

TranslatePress – WooCommerce Support

TranslatePress translates WooCommerce stores via the same front-end visual editor, with no extra addons required. Product pages, descriptions, cart, and checkout flows are all covered automatically.

Order confirmation emails are sent in the language the customer used while browsing. For logged-in users, TranslatePress remembers their last active language.

For guest users, the language used at checkout becomes the default for all subsequent emails from that order.

The one gap versus WPML is multi-currency. TranslatePress has no built-in currency switching, so if you want to display prices in local currencies, you’ll need a dedicated multi-currency plugin.

WPML – WooCommerce Support

WPML’s WooCommerce Multilingual add-on, included with the Multilingual CMS plan, is the most thorough WooCommerce integration I’ve seen in any translation plugin.

It automatically matches the buyer’s language across your entire store, covering:

• Products, categories, and attributes
• Product variations and custom fields
• Cart and checkout flows
• Shipping method names
• Order confirmation emails

Native multi-currency support is built in, with 200+ currencies available. You can set exchange-rate-based pricing or override prices manually per product per currency.

Location-based currency display is also included, so visitors automatically see prices in their local currency.

Universally – WooCommerce Support

Universally handles WooCommerce translation the same way it handles everything else: automatically, with no addons to install and no per-product configuration needed. Products, descriptions, image alt text, and the full cart and checkout flow are all covered.

Like TranslatePress, Universally doesn’t include native multi-currency support. If you want to display prices in local currencies, you’ll need a separate plugin for that.

Winner for WooCommerce Support: WPML

If WooCommerce is central to your business, then WPML wins this without much contest. Native multi-currency, fine-grained control over translated product attributes and variations, and language-matched order emails put it in a different league from both alternatives.

TranslatePress handles most WooCommerce translation needs well and is a good fit for simpler stores. The multi-currency gap is the main thing that holds it back against WPML for serious international stores.

On the other hand, Universally covers the basics, but it’s not built for complex multilingual WooCommerce setups.

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Customer Support

No plugin works perfectly forever, and when something breaks on a multilingual site, the quality and availability of support can make a real difference.

All three tools offer support, but the hours, track records, and response consistency vary significantly.

TranslatePress – Customer Support

TranslatePress has a strong support reputation backed by a large user base. WordPress.org rates it 4.7/5 across more than 1,600 reviews, and Trustpilot rates it 4.6/5. Reviewers frequently mention support agents by name and describe getting clear, practical answers quickly.

Keep in mind that support is weekday-only and not available 24/7. For complex or production-critical issues, some users report response delays.

The pattern in reviews suggests the support team handles typical questions well but can be slower to resolve tricky edge cases.

WPML – Customer Support

WPML’s support reputation is remarkable, and by all accounts it’s earned. Available 22 hours a day in nine languages, it scores 4.7/5 on both G2 and Capterra, which is their highest-rated category on both platforms.

In the majority of five-star reviews, support is the reason people cite for staying with WPML rather than switching. The words that come up repeatedly are ‘incredibly fast and accurate’ and ‘proactive’, which is a hard reputation to maintain across hundreds of reviews.

Every plan includes direct ticket access with no tier gating. A searchable forum of previously resolved tickets means you can often solve a common problem without waiting for a response at all.

Universally – Customer Support

While Universally is a newer plugin, it is built by Awesome Motive, which is the same company behind WPBeginner.

Awesome Motive is also the company behind popular plugins like WPForms, AIOSEO, and OptinMonster, which together, run on millions of WordPress sites. So, Universally launches with an established engineering and support operation behind it rather than starting from zero.

Day to day, support is handled through ticket submission, with priority turnaround for Pro plan users.

The documentation is also a genuine strength for such a new plugin. It covers installation, language management, troubleshooting, SEO, and a developer API section.

Plus, it’s written for site owners rather than developers, so you can resolve most common setup questions yourself without waiting on a reply.

Winner for Customer Support: WPML

WPML wins this one. Around-the-clock availability in nine languages, and a support reputation strong enough that it’s the most common reason users give for not switching to something else.

TranslatePress is a solid second. Its support is well-reviewed and the team clearly knows the product. The weekday-only model is a limitation, but overall review scores are strong and the user base is significantly larger than either alternative.

Universally has strong documentation and Awesome Motive’s support team behind it, but it doesn’t yet have the live support track record to challenge WPML here.

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Pricing

Pricing is where these three tools differ most sharply. TranslatePress and WPML both charge flat annual fees. Universally charges per word, per month, with pricing in USD.

Which model works out cheaper depends on how much content you have and how frequently you publish. I’ll break down each one so you can see where the value shifts.

TranslatePress – Pricing

TranslatePress offers a free core plugin on WordPress.org, which includes manual translation and one additional language.

Paid plans add AI translation, SEO Pack, and more languages:

• Free: 1 additional language, basic features, 2,000 AI translation words.
• Personal (€99/year or ~$115 USD): 1 site, 50,000 AI translation words, SEO Pack, and multiple languages.
• Business (€199/year or ~$230 USD): 3 sites, 200,000 AI words, DeepL integration, automatic language detection, translator accounts, and all addons.
• Developer (€349/year or ~$405 USD): Unlimited sites, 500,000 AI words.

A 15-day money-back guarantee is included.

One meaningful detail: if your subscription lapses, then your existing translations remain in your database and your site keeps functioning in all languages. You lose access to new translations and updates, but your translated content stays live.

WPML – Pricing

WPML has no free version.

Prices are in EUR and fluctuate with exchange rates:

• Blog (€39/year or ~$45 USD): 1 site, basic translation, no WooCommerce support, and no auto-translation credits included.
• Multilingual CMS (€99/year or ~$115 USD): 3 sites, WooCommerce support (WCML addon), and 90,000 auto-translation credits.
• Agency (€199/year or ~$230 USD): Unlimited sites, 180,000 auto-translation credits.

A 30-day money-back guarantee is included. WPML’s flat annual fee is where it becomes interesting for larger sites: it charges the same price no matter how much content you translate.

Universally – Pricing

Universally prices in USD and charges per word per month.

Plans are structured by word volume and number of languages:

• Free: 1 language and 2,000 words, no credit card required.
• Starter ($7.50/month): 1 site, 1 language, and 10,000 words.
• Business ($15.80/month): 1 site, 3 languages, and 50,000 words.
• Pro ($40.80/month): 3 sites, 5 languages, and 200,000 words.

Annual billing saves around 17%, and your purchase is covered by a 14-day, no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Since Universally is a cloud-based service, you don’t have to worry about paying for server upgrades to handle a massive database of translations. Its low entry price makes it accessible for small businesses looking to grow their global traffic affordably.

Winner for Pricing: Universally

For most single-site owners, Universally is the clear winner for pricing. It is the most affordable entry point, and the Business plan at $15.80/month gives you plenty of headroom (50,000 words across 3 languages) to grow.

However, if you are an agency managing multiple sites or translating hundreds of pages daily, WPML’s flat-fee model at €99/year (~$115 USD) offers the best high-volume value since there are no per-word limits.

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TranslatePress vs WPML vs Universally: Which One Is Better?

I tested all three translation plugins across seven criteria. Here’s how the results stack up at a glance:

	TranslatePress	WPML	Universally
Ease of setup			🥇
Translation quality	🥇		🥇
Multilingual SEO	🥇	🥇
Performance			🥇
WooCommerce		🥇
Customer support		🥇
Pricing			🥇

There’s no single winner for every situation, but the right choice usually becomes clear once you know what matters most to you.

If you want the easiest setup, fast performance, and the best overall value, Universally is my top pick.

It handles translation, multilingual SEO, and performance automatically. There are no heavy addons to install, no database bloat to worry about, and no confusing configurations.

It’s a strong choice for most WordPress users who want to go multilingual quickly and affordably.

If you want to translate visually and keep translations stored on your own server, choose TranslatePress.

The front-end visual editor is genuinely easy to use, and the experience of clicking on live page text to translate it in context is something users consistently praise. Because translations live in your database, they stay with you even if your subscription lapses.

If you’re running a serious WooCommerce store or need professional translator workflows, choose WPML.

WPML’s WooCommerce integration goes deeper than either alternative, with native multi-currency support and translated order emails. At €99/year (~$115 USD) for 3 sites, the CMS plan also offers excellent flat-fee value for agencies managing multiple client sites.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Translation Plugins

Here are answers to the questions we hear most often about these three translation plugins.

Which translation plugin is best for beginners or small businesses?

For most beginners and small businesses, Universally is the best fit. It has the fastest, easiest setup, the lowest entry price, and translates your whole site automatically, so you can go multilingual quickly and cheaply without touching any configuration.

If you’d rather edit your translations visually by clicking directly on the live page, and you want to keep your translations stored in your own database, then TranslatePress is the better choice.

And if you’re running a serious or growing WooCommerce store, or you need professional translator workflows, then WPML is built for that.

Is TranslatePress better than WPML?

It depends on what matters most to you. TranslatePress has an easier front-end visual editor and keeps your translations in your own database, so they stay with you even after your subscription ends.

WPML has stronger WooCommerce support with native multi-currency, a deeper professional translator workflow, and better-documented customer support with nearly round-the-clock availability.

If you’re a solo site owner who wants visual editing and data ownership, then TranslatePress is the better fit. If you’re running a WooCommerce store or need agency-level translation management, then WPML is the stronger tool.

Does TranslatePress slow down my site?

Somewhat, yes. Like WPML, TranslatePress stores translations in your WordPress database.

On smaller sites the impact is minimal. On large sites publishing frequently in multiple languages, the database weight grows over time.

A quality caching plugin handles most of the front-end page-load overhead for your visitors, but the database itself keeps growing, which can eventually slow down your backend WordPress admin dashboard.

Universally avoids this entirely. Translations are served from a cloud CDN with no database writes at all.

Can I switch from Universally to TranslatePress?

Yes. Because Universally is cloud-based, your translations live on its servers and sync automatically, which is exactly what keeps your database clean and your setup maintenance-free.

The trade-off is that they aren’t stored locally to export, so if you later move to a self-hosted plugin like TranslatePress, you’d regenerate the translations fresh with that tool’s own AI. If you’ve customized any terms in Universally’s Glossary, note them down first so you can recreate them quickly in the new tool.

Does TranslatePress have a free version?

Yes. The free version is available on WordPress.org and lets you add one additional language to your site with basic translation functionality, including manual translation via the visual editor and 2,000 AI translation words.

It doesn’t include automatic translation credits beyond those 2,000 words, the SEO Pack addon, or URL slug translation. Those require a paid plan starting at €99/year (~$115 USD).

WPML, by contrast, has no free version at all.

Is Universally free?

Yes. Universally has a free plan that lets you translate your site into 1 language with up to 2,000 words, and no credit card is required to start.

If you outgrow the free tier, then paid plans start at $7.50 per month for the Starter plan. Annual billing saves around 17%, and every paid plan is covered by a 14-day money-back guarantee.

How many languages do these plugins support?

TranslatePress supports 160+ languages. Universally supports 110+. WPML supports 65+ with 2,500+ language pair combinations.

For most sites, all three cover the languages you need. For less common languages, TranslatePress gives you the widest selection.

Is WPML still worth using?

Yes, for the right use case. WPML remains the most powerful option for complex WordPress setups, particularly deep WooCommerce integration, professional translator workflows, and agency multi-site management.

The setup takes longer and there’s no free tier, but for advanced multilingual sites it’s still the most capable option available. If those specific strengths don’t apply to your site, then TranslatePress or Universally will serve you better with less effort.

Do these plugins work with Elementor, Divi, and other page builders?

Yes, all three work with the major page builders, but in different ways. WPML has the most thorough integration. Over 1,000 plugins and themes are certified compatible through its Go Global program, including Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, and WPBakery.

If you’re running a complex page builder setup, WPML’s certification is worth knowing about.

TranslatePress translates page builder content via its front-end visual editor. Because you’re clicking on content as it appears on the live page, it handles most page builders automatically.

Some dynamically loaded strings may need a manual scan, but the process is straightforward for most setups.

Universally translates page builder content automatically through its cloud translation layer. Because translations are applied at the cloud level before content is served, most page builders are handled without additional configuration.

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Additional Resources About WordPress Translation

I hope this article helped you choose the best translation plugin for your WordPress website.

You may also find these other guides on multilingual WordPress useful:

• Universally Review. Our in-depth look at Universally’s features, pricing, and how it performs in practice.
• How to Easily Translate Your WordPress with TranslatePress. A step-by-step walkthrough of setting up TranslatePress on a real WordPress site.
• WPML Review. A detailed review of WPML covering setup, translation workflow, and WooCommerce integration.
• Best WordPress Translation Plugins. Our roundup of the top translation plugins, including free and budget-friendly alternatives.
• How to Easily Create a Multilingual WordPress Site. A beginner-friendly guide to going multilingual on WordPress.
• How to Create a Multilingual WordPress Site with WPML. A step-by-step guide specifically for WPML users.
• How to Automatically Translate WordPress. How to set up automatic translation on your WordPress site without doing it manually.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post TranslatePress vs WPML vs Universally: Which Is Better in 2026? first appeared on WPBeginner.

The city made it easy to settle in. Every attendee’s badge carried a transport hologram good for unlimited trams and buses. The Main Market Square, the largest in Europe, sat a short ride away, and the local food ran the gamut from pierogi to żurek soup to obwarzanek pretzels sold off the street.

Kraków is beautiful, with history everywhere.
– Sebastian Miśniakiewicz, local team lead

Contributor Day Opens the Week

As it does every year, the event began the day before the talks. Contributors filled the venue for Contributor Day, a working session where people work together to improve WordPress itself rather than watch a presentation about it. The morning started with registration and a welcome, the room split into teams, and a group photo broke up the work around midday. The afternoon ran a second working block before each team gathered to share what it had done.

The range of tables is the clearest picture of how wide the project has become. Newcomers could sit down with Polyglots to translate WordPress into their own language, with Documentation to fix the pages people reach when they get stuck, or with Support to answer questions in the forums. More technical tables covered Core, Performance, Testing, Themes, and the Plugins team, whose reviewers screen every plugin submitted to the directory.

First-timers were not left to find their own way. The day was built around onboarding tables, named table leads, and mentors, with an open invitation for experienced contributors to adopt a newcomer and walk them through their first patch, string, or ticket.

People who could not travel to Kraków were welcomed to join remotely through the #contributor-day channel in the Make WordPress Slack, so distance was not a reason to sit the day out.

The Birthplace of the Web

It was fitting that the opening keynote came from CERN. The European Laboratory for Particle Physics, on the French-Swiss border outside Geneva, is where the World Wide Web was invented more than 30 years ago, and Joachim Valdemar Yde, who has managed CERN’s web team since 2021, came to explain why the laboratory had chosen WordPress to carry its web presence forward.

Yde and Francisco Borges Aurindo Barros, who leads CERN’s WordPress infrastructure, framed the move as a chance to give a web presence built up over three decades a shared, modern foundation. After evaluating several leading content management systems against CERN’s needs, WordPress came out on top.

Barros walked through what they had built. The guiding idea is that people at CERN focus on their content while the web team looks after the platform underneath. A self-service portal lets anyone request a site in a few clicks. Behind it, a shared distribution supplies a common theme and a set of approved, security-hardened plugins, and an in-house tool provisions each new site on Kubernetes in about a minute. In its first year, the platform has already set up hundreds of sites.

Moving years of existing content onto the new platform is the other half of the work, and the team automated it: a single command lifts each site’s pages, headings, and images and rebuilds them as Gutenberg blocks, with no downtime. They plan to open source the tool.

Then Yde delivered the line that the room had been waiting for.

As of today, our main flagship website, home.cern, is now served on WordPress. It’s been automatically migrated, and it’s live.

– Joachim Valdemar Yde, Web Manager, CERN

The rollout is on track to wrap up over the coming months, and early impressions, Yde said, have been overwhelmingly positive, with easy wins in responsiveness and accessibility. For those at the event, the keynote pointed the room toward a later talk by CERN’s Akanksha Chatterjee on building and maintaining the laboratory’s engineering websites on the same service.

There is a neat symmetry to it. The institution that published the world’s first website now runs on the software that powers more than 40% of today’s web, licensed under the GPL and maintained by the people in the room.

WordPress 7.0 and AI

WordPress 7.0 was a throughline of the conference. Several sessions placed the release at the center, framing it less as a routine update than as a change in what the software is, and in what it makes possible for the people who build with it.

The anchor for that conversation was a panel called “Inside WordPress 7.0.” It gathered contributors who worked on the release, among them Juan Manuel Garrido, Adam Silverstein, Benjamin Zekavica, Sarah Norris, and Milana Cap. It was framed around more than a feature list, setting out to cover how a release of this size actually comes together: the contribution workflows, the coordination, and the human aspects of shipping software in the open.

What gives this release its weight is the work moving into WordPress’s core: a native AI client, a new Abilities API that lets plugins declare what they can do in a way other tools can discover, and a Connectors screen for wiring up providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google Gemini. The argument running through the AI sessions was that this belongs to everyone who builds on WordPress, not only to developers shipping their own integrations. Speakers got specific about how to put that to work.

• Anukasha Singh focused on how the Abilities API can make plugin permissions cleaner and safer than the capability checks developers have leaned on for years.
• In a workshop, Vito Peleg set out to take builders from one-off prompts toward a tool-using workflow that audits a live site and files structured tickets.
• Alain Schlesser, a WP-CLI maintainer who has worked on structured data and the AI-native web, turned to a fast-growing opportunity. AI assistants and search now send real traffic to the open web, with more than a billion referral visits logged by the middle of 2025. His session framed WordPress as well-placed to earn that attention, with a practical checklist for getting a site ready to be found, read, and cited.

People stayed at the center of the conversation, too. Tammie Lister, in a talk called “Human in the loop means something,” framed the phrase as a real commitment rather than a checkbox. Humans and AI are each good at different things, and the products worth building let each do what it does best.

Development and Craft

The development sessions were where the craft lived. Dennis Snell, who co-wrote the HTML API and designed the block parser, devoted a deep-dive workshop to that API. Peter Wilson, a long-time Core committer on the Performance team, focused on how the WP_Query class has been made faster through better caching, and how site builders can take advantage of that at scale.

Scaling got a hands-on session of its own. One talk set out to see how far a WordPress site can run on a twelve-dollar virtual server, profiling it under load in Grafana and tuning away the bottlenecks, with a GitHub repository so attendees could follow along at home. Fellyph Cintra focused on the latest in WordPress Playground, the browser-based tooling and architectural changes that the project credits with a real speed-up.

Jessica Lyschik, a Core contributor and former default-theme co-lead, set out to make the case that accessibility-ready requirements are far easier to meet than most theme developers assume, drawing on real reviews of both block and classic themes.

Two members of the Plugins team, David Perez and Fran Torres, framed their session as a practical clinic. Between them, they have reviewed more than 25,000 plugins, and they set out to name the common, avoidable issues that keep good plugins stuck in the review queue. For a first-time author, that is the difference between an afternoon and a month of waiting.

The Business of WordPress and the Open Web

The business and community sessions pulled the lens back to people, with a refreshingly unsentimental view of running a WordPress business. Debbie Levitt built her talk around a model for finding product-market fit at three levels at once, on the premise that teams celebrate one good metric and then wonder months later where their users went. Vassilena Valchanova took on a quieter problem: being good at the work is not the same as anyone knowing you are.

There was a local thread here as well. Irfani Silviana, a full-stack developer at a Kraków-based agency, framed the Business Model Canvas as a translation layer that moves developers from shipping features to engineering business value, a fitting talk to give in her own city.

The web’s standards, the argument goes, remain as open as the day Tim Berners-Lee created them at CERN.

That idea carried through the rest of the community sessions.

• David Snead, an attorney who works with internet infrastructure providers, set out to explain how hosts, registrars, and registries coordinate against abuse through shared, real-time intelligence, on the logic that a threat to one WordPress host is a threat to all of them.
• Marcel Bootsman shared a practical playbook for how companies and individuals can support open source sustainably and look after the people who keep it going.
• Karin Christen set out to describe how her Swiss agency turned Five for the Future from a good intention into a standing team habit through internal contributor days.

Running alongside the talks, the hands-on workshops were a chance to build something on the spot. In one, Ryan Welcher set out to build a touch-enabled gallery slider with the Interactivity API, while another centered on Full Site Editing, with a working portfolio theme attendees could reuse on their next client project. These were laptop-open, leave-with-working-code sessions.

Closing Fireside Chat

The closing session opened with a warm gesture from Kraków University of Technology. Representatives took the stage to thank the organizers and the community and to present Mary Hubbard, the Executive Director of WordPress, with a gift from their faculty of informatics and mathematics. They described what the university and the WordCamp community share: a love of learning and sharing knowledge, and an openness to new ideas, skills, and connections.

Hubbard used the moment to share some news. Starting in October, the university will open a WordPress-specific course, which she called a trail-blazing event for Poland and for WordPress. Earlier that day, the program’s first cohort, around 20 students, had shown what they built, part of the WordPress Campus Connect and WordPress Credits education work.

Hubbard then turned the stage into a conversation, inviting Matías Ventura, the lead of the Gutenberg project, and Rich Tabor, a WordPress designer and developer, to talk through where WordPress is heading and how AI fits in. WordPress 7.0 had just launched with Ventura as its release lead, and he asked everyone who had contributed to it to stand for a round of applause.

Much of the chat explored the balance between building WordPress with AI, and building with AI on WordPress, without losing the human part. Ventura noted that WordPress’s long investment in its design system is paying off now that you can ask an AI to extend a menu or a control, and it reaches for the right components. He pointed to older primitives gaining new value, like WP-CLI, which AI models use fluently, and to Studio Code, an open source, agent-based coding tool the team has been building for WordPress. Tabor showed how he now ships many small editor improvements by talking to an agent instead of typing code, and Ventura demoed desktop mode and open-canvas experiments that reimagine the admin.

On open source and AI, Hubbard argued that open source is why WordPress has thrived, that the same values should shape AI, and that the community should be far more vocal about it. As she put it, “We should be talking about it, and we should be much louder about it.”

Audience questions pushed on multilingual support, unsticking long-stalled tickets, and reaching a younger, more diverse community. On that last point, Hubbard came back to education, pointing to a US pilot of an AI literacy micro-credential that uses WordPress as the playground, and made the case for it:

I think that focusing in on younger generations, and bringing them into the project in a healthy way, with the dynamic of education as well as mentorship, and how we can understand and learn from them, as well as mentor them and adopt them as contributors, is very important.

– Mary Hubbard, WordPress Executive Director

Beyond the Talks

WordCamp is also about the corridor outside the talks, and Kraków gave people reason to roam. Between sessions, attendees moved through the sponsor area for product demos and conversations that often carried on over lunch.

The after-party was the not-so-subtle flourish of a local team that doubled the usual length to eight hours, with Polish food and dragon-and-floral swag that nodded to the Wawel Dragon of Kraków legend. The nearby artistic Kazimierz district kept the evening going, and the trams, as one organizer had promised, were still running reliably afterward.

What Comes Next

WordCamps run on people, and 2026 was no different. The organizing teams, the speakers, the sponsors who funded the venue and the meals, the local crew who sorted trams and pierogi, and the contributors who arrived a day early to work on the project all built this WCEU together. The people watching the livestream from outside Kraków were part of it as well.

For anyone whose appetite was only sharpened by three days in Poland, the calendar already has the next stop. WordCamp US 2026 (Phoenix, USA) runs August 16 to 19, with its own Contributor Day opening the week.

WordCamp Europe will return next year (May 27-29, 2027) in Málaga, Spain.

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Photography by the WCEU 2026 photography team. See the full galleries on Flickr.

Hi there,

This is the time of the year when publishing on the Gutenberg Times becomes less frequent. I will be on vacation and back at the beginning of July with the weekend edition, just in-time for Beta 1 of WordPress 7.1. Three more Gutenberg plugin releases will happen before that.

What also happened was that someone grabbed my instagram account in this AI hack at Meta. Although Meta reports this as resolved, I probably won’t get my account back. I am now actively looking for a better way to share my photos without the overlords that can’t keep things tight. It’s not that I didn’t know better. <sigh/> It’s a cautionary tale for what’s in store for all internet services handing over crucial business processes to a gulliable AI.

Don’t let the small stuff bring you down. Have a splendid weekend ahead. Until July!

Yours,
Birgit

I started watching WordCamp Europe LiveStreams on Friday and started with the keynote Two worlds collide: WordPress at CERN with Joachim Valdemar Yde and Francisco Borges Aurindo Barros. The Livestream are all routed to the WordPress YouTube account. The schedule is posted on the website.

Over the course of the weekend more recordings will be uploaded to WordPress TV > WordCamp Europe 2026.

On Saturday, Matt Mullenweg, co-founder of WordPress and CEO of Automattic will close out WordCamp Europe 2026 with his keynote. Afterward, the organizers will reveal where WordCamp Europe 2027 will take place. Tune in around 2:15 UTC / 8:15 am EDT.

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I had the great pleasure chatting with Abha Thakor on the OpenMakers through what WordPress 7.0 “Armstrong” means for you. First, the safety bit: test on a staging site or Playground before updating, and check your PHP. Then the good stuff. Visual revisions show edits in context with color coding. Notes keep feedback inside the editor. Patterns gain content-only editing, blocks can hide by device, and new AI connector APIs give developers a unified foundation. Real-time editing waits for a later release.

Developing Gutenberg and WordPress

Arthur Chu walks you through what’s new in Gutenberg 23.3. The modal media editor is now the default for cropping. It pulls cropping, flip, rotation, and metadata into one place. The experimental customizable dashboard grows too, with five new widgets you can drag and resize. Responsive styles now reach individual blocks, so designs adapt per screen.

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Rae Morey reports that Gutenberg 23.3 brings an experimental, customizable WordPress dashboard. It’s the admin’s biggest structural shakeup in years. You can drag, resize, and rearrange widgets like Welcome, Activity, and Site Health to fit how you actually work. It’s the first testable preview of a long-discussed overhaul. Enable it under Gutenberg > Experiments to try it.

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Jarda Snajdr reports that the React 19 upgrade has been reverted in Gutenberg. Shortly after 23.3.0 shipped, many plugins built for React 18 started crashing. The APIs barely changed, but the runtimes clashed: React 19 rejects elements made by a bundled React 18 JSX helper. So 23.3.2 rolls back to React 18. The team still plans the upgrade for 7.1—this time with a feature flag and a compatibility layer.

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Isabel Brison and I chatted extensively about the latest Gutenberg plugin releases 23.1 to 23.3 and discussed the responsive controls now available in the Gutenberg plugin for desktop, tablet and mobile view ports. The episode will drop in your favorite podcast app over the weekend.

Rich Tabor shares a few “little big things” for WordPress editing. The idea is simple: complexity has piled up, and small fixes can clear it. His PRs make block locking a one-click job in List View. They keep you in place when editing synced patterns, instead of whisking you off to another view. And zooming out reuses the familiar Patterns Explorer. He’s not precious about them—contributors are warmly invited to take them over the line.

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Dave Smith walks you through an interactive prototype reimagining the WordPress Site Editor around user goals rather than system architecture. Built during Automattic’s Radical Speed Month, it keeps the same blocks, templates, and data model intact while changing entry points, language, and defaults. It’s an experiment, not a roadmap.

Calls for Testing for WordPress 7.1

With WordPress 7.0 out the door, contributors shared a series of Calls for testing this week to prepare for WordPress 7.1. The schedule is tight with Beta 1 slated for July 15, 2026.

Ramon Dodd puts out a call for testing the new Media Editor Modal. Cropping in the block editor hasn’t changed much in years, and the old inline tool leans on a limited third-party library. This new standard way of Image edition inside the Block editor replaces it with a WordPress-native one. You get freeform and aspect-ratio cropping, flip, rotation, and metadata editing in one place. The quickest way to try it is a ready-made Playground link. Feedback is welcome via the comments or GitHub.

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Anne McCarthy announced a collaborative editing outreach effort for WordPress 7.1. After real-time collaboration was pulled from 7.0, this gathers real-world early adopters across many hosting setups to find bugs faster. It lives in one Slack channel, #collaborative-editing-outreach. If you’d use collaborative editing regularly and run the latest Gutenberg, you’re invited—through the cycle, with a test team badge at the end.

Rae Morey has the skinny for you in Contributors Launch FSE-Style Outreach Program to Get Real-Time Collaboration Ready for WordPress 7.1

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Adam Silverstein puts out a call for testing client-side media processing, now targeting WordPress 7.1. Here’s the idea: when you upload an image, your browser resizes and encodes every size locally using VIPS in WebAssembly, before anything reaches the server. That eases CPU and memory load on hosts and brings modern formats like AVIF, WebP, HEIC, and JPEG XL to every site. Browsers that can’t cope fall back quietly to server-side. Try it in Chromium with the latest Gutenberg.

Plugins, Themes, and Tools for #nocode site builders and owners

Brian Coords invites you to a live panel on practical AI workflows for WordPress and WooCommerce on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, at 10am PDT. Hosted with Shani Banerjee and featuring Nik McLaughlin, Kyle Runner, and Suzanne Kolpakov, the conversation covers WooCommerce MCP, the WordPress Abilities API, Pressable MCP, and making your own plugins more agent-ready. You’ll come away with practical ideas for managing stores and guiding cautious clients, plus open Q&A. Can’t make it live? Register anyway for the recording.

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Nathan Wrigley talks with plugin reviewer Luke Carbis about the future of WordPress plugins on the Jukebox podcast. Here’s the worry: plugin submissions have quadrupled in a year, largely AI-generated, so good plugins struggle to stand out. Carbis floats ideas you can test: logging into your site with your WordPress.org account, installing from your own Git repos, or a commercial marketplace funding contributors. They also weigh AI ethics, a generational backlash, and his proposed AI-disclosure header for the directory.

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Wes Theron published a new training video and you can learn how to customize your site’s navigation menus with AI. Once your site is connected, you describe the change and the agent makes it. You’ll learn to add a page to your header, remove an outdated link, and reorder items. It also covers building dropdown menus under an unclickable parent, adding a footer menu, and linking to blog categories. The point: clear menus help visitors find what matters.

Theme Development for Full Site Editing and Blocks

Ajit Bohra and the LUBUS team released Color Palette Block 2.0, a free plugin for building and sharing color palettes in the block editor. It grew out of their own client and internal documentation needs. It’s handy for brand kits, design systems, and style guides. You add swatches manually, pull from your theme, or generate random ones. Pick from four display styles—Square, Polaroid, Circle, or Droplet—and copy each color as HEX, RGB, HSL, or a CSS variable.

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Justin Tadlock shares a playful tutorial on registering custom icons for WordPress 7.0’s new Icon block. Since the public registration API won’t land until 7.1, you’ll learn a clever workaround using PHP Reflection to reach the protected WP_Icons_Registry::register() method, bundling SVGs in your theme through an Icon enum and registrar class. Built on work by Ryan Welcher and Nick Diego, it’s educational fun—not for production, where Nick Diego’s Icon Block plugin still does the job properly.

Building Blocks and Tools for the Block editor.

Casey Burridge introduced Block MCP, GravityKit’s open-source WordPress MCP server. The problem it solves is familiar: existing MCPs treat a post as one HTML blob, so AI edits strip block markers and break your layout. Block MCP exposes each block as an addressable unit with a stable ID. Your agent can make surgical edits, batch up to 50 changes atomically, and undo any of them. In their tests across Claude models, only Block MCP worked reliably.

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Questions? Suggestions? Ideas?
Don’t hesitate to send them via email or
send me a message on WordPress Slack or Twitter @bph.

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For questions to be answered on the Gutenberg Changelog,
send them to changelog@gutenbergtimes.com

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Cześć wszystkim, Kraków… I made the call not to fly to Poland for WordCamp Europe. I’m very sorry for the last-minute notice; I was really hoping to make it. I’m okay, but I want to stay close to loved ones going through difficult times.

Seeing the pictures from Contributor Day warms my heart.

Bardzo za Wami tęsknię. I miss you dearly.

The Protect The Shire post on W.org contains what I planned to talk about, and Mary Hubbard and Matías Ventura will lead the Q&A keynote at the end.

I’ll watch all the sessions so if any WordCamp speakers would like feedback on their talk, just fill out this form, and I’ll write something up and message it to you on the .org Slack. 

Meta started rolling out its WhatsApp AI agent (officially called Meta Business Agent) to eligible businesses worldwide.

Its AI agent can answer questions, recommend products, and qualify leads for your business around the clock. For small businesses, that means you don’t have to hire additional staff to qualify leads. Since it works 24/7, no need to worry about missed messages during non-work hours.

The problem is that it only works inside WhatsApp, so the visitors sitting on your website right now never see it.

What if I told you that you can put that same AI agent to work right on your WordPress site? That means you can turn your casual visitors into qualified leads before they ever click away!

In this guide, I’ll show you how to set up Meta’s WhatsApp AI agent and connect it to your WordPress site, step by step.

What Is Meta’s WhatsApp AI Agent?

Meta Business Agent is an AI assistant that lives inside WhatsApp Business and Instagram direct messages (DMs). More than a million businesses are already using it in countries like India and Brazil. Meta is now expanding it to more businesses worldwide.

Once it’s set up, it can answer customer questions 24/7, suggest products from your catalog, book appointments, and collect lead details. It also hands the conversation to a real person whenever the customer asks or the question gets too complex.

For now, small and medium businesses can use it for free through the WhatsApp Business app. Meta has said larger businesses will eventually pay based on usage through a Premium plan.

Here’s the catch: Meta’s AI agent only works inside WhatsApp. It does not place a chatbox on your website, so a visitor browsing your homepage has no way to reach it unless you give them one.

Why Connect Meta’s WhatsApp AI Agent to Your WordPress Site?

For a small business, this isn’t just a cool integration… It’s about capturing sales you’re currently losing:

• Catch customers at the exact moment. Your visitors are on your website, not in their WhatsApp app, when they’re deciding whether to purchase from you. Having a conversation with them at the right moment removes the friction that makes people bounce
• Get your time back (without hiring anyone). As a small business owner, you can’t be glued to your phone answering the same questions all day and night. Meta Business Agent handles the repetitive stuff for you 24/7, so you don’t have to worry about after-hours messages.
• Start helping visitors today, even before Meta reaches you. Meta’s agent is still rolling out, so it may not be available for your account yet. With the WPChat plugin, your visitors get instant AI-powered answers right now, so you don’t have to wait to start converting.

Now let’s set everything up. 👇

Step 1: Turn On Meta’s Business AI in WhatsApp

Before you add anything to WordPress, it helps to switch on the AI agent that will answer your WhatsApp messages. You’ll need the WhatsApp Business app on your phone, which is different from the regular WhatsApp app.

Open the WhatsApp Business app and tap the ‘Tools’ tab. Look for the option called ‘Your Business AI’ and tap it to start the guided setup.

From there, WhatsApp walks you through training the agent.

You’ll add your business details, connect a product catalog if you have one, and upload a short FAQ covering things like your hours, shipping, and return policy.

You’ll also set your handoff rules, which decide when a chat should be passed to a real person. I recommend keeping these generous at first so that customers can always reach a human easily.

There are also a few rules Meta requires you to follow:

• Your AI has to identify itself as an assistant.
• It can only handle business tasks (not open-ended chat).
• Customers must be able to request a human at any time.

Once your agent is active, any message sent to your WhatsApp Business phone number can be answered automatically.

Next, let’s give your website visitors a way to start that conversation.

Step 2: Install and Activate WPChat

WPChat is the plugin that connects your WordPress site to WhatsApp. It’s made by Smash Balloon, the team behind some of the most popular social media plugins for WordPress, so it’s built to be beginner-friendly.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the WPChat plugin. If you need help with this step, see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Step 3: Connect Your WhatsApp Business Number

After activating the plugin, you’ll see a new WPChat menu in your WordPress sidebar. Click it, then click the ‘Set Up’ button to start the onboarding wizard.

The first thing it asks for is your phone number. Enter the same WhatsApp Business number you used in Step 1, since this is where your visitors’ messages will land.

Have your phone nearby in case you’re asked to verify the number by SMS or call.

One important tip: use a real mobile or landline number, not a virtual or VoIP number from a service like Google Voice. WhatsApp blocks those, and you risk losing access to your conversations.

Next, the wizard lets you pick a starting theme for your widget. You can choose ‘Basic’, ‘Night’, or ‘Pastel’, and you’ll be able to fine-tune the look later.

After that, you’ll choose where the widget appears. You can show it on your whole site or limit it to specific pages, then finish the wizard.

If you’re on the free version, just click ‘Complete Setup Without Upgrading’.

Your chat widget is now live on your site and pointed at your WhatsApp.

Step 4: Set Up Your Support Agent

WPChat uses agent profiles to show visitors who they’re talking to. Even if it’s just you, setting up one agent makes the chat feel more personal.

Note: The free version includes one agent. If you have a support team, the Basic plan supports up to 5 agents, the Plus plan up to 10, and the Elite plan offers unlimited agents.

Go to WPChat » Agents and click the ‘New Agent’ button.

Now you can fill in the agent’s name, add their contact details, and upload a profile picture if you’d like.

When you’re done, click ‘Save Changes’.

The contact details you enter here are what connect each agent to WhatsApp, so double-check the phone number is correct.

If you want to offer more than WhatsApp, click ‘Agent Settings’ at the top of the page. Here you can turn on ‘Messenger’, ‘Telegram‘, and ‘Instagram’, then add each agent’s username for those platforms.

You can also set availability hours in ‘Agent Settings’, so the widget shows when your team is online. When everyone is offline, your FAQ takes over, which you’ll set up in the next step.

Step 5: Customize Your Chat Widget

A chat widget should match your brand so it feels like part of your site, not something that’s been added on. WPChat has a live customizer that updates as you edit.

Head to WPChat » Customizer. You’ll see a preview of your widget on the right and your editing options on the left.

From here, you can adjust a few things to make it your own:

• Theme: Switch between the prebuilt designs as a starting point.
• Color Palette: Pick a preset or set a custom ‘Accent Color’ to match your brand.
• Header: Change the welcome text visitors see at the top of the chat.
• Icon: Choose the button icon that opens and closes the widget.
• Assistant Avatar: Use a preset image or upload your own.

You can also reorder the sections inside the widget by dragging them, or hide a section by clicking the eye icon next to it.

When everything looks right, click the ‘Save’ button to apply your changes.

Step 6: Set Up Your On-Site Smart FAQ

This is the part that makes your website feel instantly helpful. The Smart FAQ answers common questions directly in the widget, so visitors don’t have to wait for a reply or even leave your site.

Go to WPChat » Frequent Questions and click the ‘Add Question’ button.

Now you need to enter the question and type a clear answer.

You can even add an image if it helps explain something.

Repeat this for the questions you hear most often, like shipping times, pricing, or return policies. The free version lets you add up to 10 questions, which covers the basics for most sites.

Here’s where the AI comes in. On paid plans, WPChat’s ‘Smart Search’ uses AI to understand what a visitor means, not just the exact words they type.

So if someone asks, “How long until my order shows up?” the AI automatically matches it to your “What are your delivery times?” answer. It’s a small touch that makes the chat feel like it actually understands people.

Step 7: Create a Chat Funnel (Paid Feature)

If you want to guide visitors toward a goal, like booking a call or finding the right product, then chat funnels let you build a simple automated flow. Chat funnels are available on the Plus plan and above, so feel free to skip this step if you’re on the free or Basic plan.

Go to WPChat » Chat Funnels and click ‘New Funnel’.

Make sure you give your funnel a name so you can find it later, then edit the first message block with a greeting and a few options for the visitor to choose from.

For each option, click the ‘pencil icon’ to decide what happens next. You can send the visitor to another message or pass them to customer support in WhatsApp.

You can drag the blocks to reorder them, then click ‘Save Changes’. Finally, choose which pages the funnel appears on and save again.

A good funnel does some of the qualifying work before the conversation ever reaches WhatsApp, where Meta’s AI can pick up the lead and keep going.

Step 8: Add WhatsApp Chat to Your WooCommerce Products (Optional)

If you run an online store, your product pages are where buyers hesitate most. A chat option right there can answer the one question standing between a visitor and a purchase.

With WPChat, you can control exactly where the widget shows up. In the ‘Customizer’ visibility settings (or during setup), choose to display the widget on your WooCommerce product pages and category pages.

This way, a shopper looking at a product can ask about sizing, stock, or shipping without leaving the page. Their question goes to WhatsApp, where Meta’s agent can recommend the right item or confirm availability.

The result is around-the-clock support that starts on your website and continues in the app your customers already use, all on your terms.

Alternative: Add a Simple WhatsApp Link Without a Plugin

If all you want is a clickable WhatsApp link and not the full on-site widget, then you can skip the plugin method.

WhatsApp has a built-in click-to-chat link that opens a chat with your number on a visitor’s phone or in WhatsApp Web.

This is the quickest way to get a working WhatsApp link, but keep in mind that it is just a link. It does not give you the on-site chat widget, the Smart FAQ, agent profiles, or the chat funnels that WPChat provides. If you want visitors to chat right on your pages, then the WPChat setup above is the fuller option.

The format is https://wa.me/<number>. Replace <number> with your full phone number in international format, digits only, with no plus sign, spaces, dashes, or leading zero.

For example, https://wa.me/15551234567.

You can also pre-fill a starter message so visitors don’t have to type one.

Just add ?text= followed by your URL-encoded message, like https://wa.me/15551234567?text=Hi%2C%20I%20have%20a%20question.

Once you have the link, you can drop it almost anywhere on your site:

• Paste it into a Button block so it stands out as a call to action.
• Add it to a navigation menu as a custom link.
• Link any text or image to it in a post or page.

Frequently Asked Questions About WhatsApp AI Agent

Here are some common questions about adding Meta’s WhatsApp AI agent to WordPress.

Is there a free WhatsApp plugin for WordPress?

Yes. WPChat has a free version that lets you add a WhatsApp chat widget, connect one agent, and create up to 10 FAQ entries. You only need a paid plan for AI Smart Search, chat funnels, and extra agents.

Is Meta’s WhatsApp AI agent free?

Right now, small and medium businesses can use Meta Business Agent for free through the WhatsApp Business app. Meta has said larger businesses will eventually pay based on usage through a Premium plan.

Can I connect Meta’s WhatsApp AI agent to my WordPress site?

Not directly, because Meta’s agent only runs inside WhatsApp. You connect them by adding a WhatsApp chat widget to your site with a plugin like WPChat, which sends visitors into WhatsApp where the AI answers.

Do I need a WhatsApp Business account?

Yes. You’ll need the WhatsApp Business app and a real (non-virtual) phone number to use Meta’s AI agent and to connect your number to WPChat.

Can I show the WhatsApp button only on certain pages?

Yes. WPChat lets you choose where the widget appears. The free version offers basic site-wide control, while the Basic plan and above add advanced targeting by page, category, or product.

Additional Resources for Live Chat

You now have Meta’s WhatsApp AI connected to your WordPress site.

Visitors get instant answers where they are, and your most common questions are handled automatically day and night.

You may also want to check out these additional guides on AI chat and live chat for WordPress:

• Best WhatsApp Plugins for WordPress — A roundup of the top plugins for connecting your WordPress site to WhatsApp, with options for every budget.
• Best Live Chat Support Software for WordPress — Compare the top live chat tools to find the right fit for your support team and budget.
• How to Add a Chatbot in WordPress (Step by Step) — Learn how to set up an AI-powered chatbot that answers questions and qualifies leads around the clock.
• Best AI Chatbot Software for Your Website — A comparison of the top AI chatbot platforms to help you choose the right tool for your business.

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The post [NEW] How to Use Meta’s WhatsApp AI Agent in WordPress first appeared on WPBeginner.