Software reviews — Web Hosting News

EmDash 1.0 is stable: marketplace plugins run in isolated Workers with declared capabilities, authors own their registry entries, hosts need Node or Workers.

cPanel declared cPanel AI generally available on September 17. Meridian, the AI Assistant, AI App Hosting and MCP sit inside the ordinary license, while Nova is partner-only and metered in AI credits whose wholesale price neither cPanel nor WebPros has published.

nginx can now be asked which configuration it is actually running, a question that had no answer before 1.31.5, and a reload now returns an HTTP status code with the logs attached. The Control API came out of the paid NGINX Plus release, and it ships with no authentication of its own.

Hostinger has merged its two builders into AI Builder, where the AI provisions the backend rather than recommending one. Asked what customers can take elsewhere, the company told us the codebase exports while the database stays. Its own documentation adds that the export is one way.

Blesta calls 6.0 the biggest release in its history: the Paradigm admin rebuild, an AI layer that answers tickets on a confidence threshold you set, MRR and churn computed natively, and cryptographically signed upgrades. Licenses are $17.95 and $20.95 a month

We tested the public AI assistants of six hosting companies against a demanding WooCommerce buyer. Asked which rival would fit better, with no list to choose from, not one named a competitor, so the real test became how well they deflected. Bluehost's assistant broke, and the most useful answers did not come from the priciest names.

Extendify's new Code platform lets any hosting provider sell prompt-to-app building under its own brand, deployed through WHMCS or API. It answers the customer drift toward vibe-coding tools, and it hands hosts new revenue along with the support and security risks of AI-built software.

WooCommerce 10.9 reaches stable June 23 with seven canonical abilities, five of them write operations, exposed through the Abilities API and MCP. The permission callback is the new security boundary; a Store API change that cuts draft-order writes is a quiet win for hosting economics.

WordPress 7.0 ships May 20, 2026 with a built-in AI Client supporting Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, a raised PHP minimum of 7.4, and DataViews replacing the admin screens. Real-time collaboration was cut on May 8 due to race conditions, server load, and fuzz testing failures.

AdminBolt is currently the only self-hosted control panel to ship a working in-panel AI assistant, with WhatsApp as a mobile extension.

Extendify addresses the blank WordPress install problem that drives early hosting churn. AutoLaunch lets hosting providers create a finished site during their own signup flow, version 3.0 adds one-prompt website creation, and the AI Agent keeps customers managing their site from within WordPress rather than opening a support ticket.

Automattic launched Studio Code in public beta, a CLI agent built on Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.6 that builds, configures, and publishes WordPress sites from natural language commands, running on top of MCP write capabilities launched in March 2026.

At v0.1.0, EmDash is a developer preview with no plugin ecosystem and reported performance issues, not a production platform. But it comes from a company with the infrastructure and developer reach to make it matter over a longer horizon than the current release suggests.

WordPress.org launched my.WordPress.net - a fully functional WordPress instance running entirely in the browser via WebAssembly. No server, no signup, no cost. It includes a built-in AI assistant and positions WordPress as a zero-friction personal workspace.

WordPress 7.0 introduces AI Connectors - a centralized system for connecting plugins to OpenAI, Gemini, and Claude - alongside real-time collaborative editing and an admin redesign. The release ships infrastructure, not features: AI capabilities come via plugins, not core.

TL;DR - Wix Harmony, announced in January 2026, is Wix’s latest attempt to shorten the path from idea to live website by combining AI-driven generation with manual editing. In practice, it might

CloudLinux has announced an investment in Seahawk, a company that delivers WordPress support and services for hosting providers under a white-label model. The goal is to help hosters offer help with websites—not just infrastructure—and improve retention among users who rely on WordPress.

.ab-wrap{ max-width:940px; margin:0 auto; padding:36px 22px; font:400 18px/1.78 Inter,system-ui,-apple-system,Segoe UI,Roboto,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; color:#0f172a; background:transparent; } .ab-kicker{display:inline-block;font-size:12px;font-weight:800;letter-spacing:.12em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#64748b;margin-bottom:10px;} .ab-lead{font-size:20px;line-height:1.9;margin:8px 0 22px;color:#111827;} .ab-hr{height:1px;border:0;background:linear-gradient(90deg,#e6e7eb,transparent);margin:30px 0;} h2{font-weight:800;font-size:30px;margin:18px 0 12px;color:#071029} h3{font-weight:800;font-size:22px;margin:16px 0 10px;color:#071029} p{margin:0 0 16px} .ab-list{list-style:none;margin:10px 0 18px;padding:0} .ab-list

Imunify has introduced a new WordPress plugin that allows website owners to monitor the activity of Imunify360 protection directly from the WordPress admin panel. Until now, most users were unaware that their websites were being actively protected, as all security features were only accessible through the hosting control panel. That is now changing.

HostBill has introduced a new integration with Webuzo, aimed at making it easier for hosting companies to sell and manage shared hosting. The update allows providers to bill for disk usage, bandwidth, email accounts, databases, and domains, while automating account setup and management.