Discover WPCS, the world’s first multi-tenant WP cloud solution – intreview with Wijnand van Leeuwen

Specialization compounds; productization multiplies it. Moving repeatable work into a packaged offering makes improvements benefit everyone at once. Agencies that adopt a SaaS or WaaS model gain the ability to evolve continuously – each new insight or feature becomes a shared upgrade, not a one-time delivery. This transforms the traditional WordPress project cycle into an ongoing product lifecycle where every customer benefits from collective learning. Need a WordPress website that truly scales? In this episode we talked about WPCS – the world’s first multi‑tenant WordPress (WP) cloud platform for agencies and product teams.

Our guest is Wijnand van Leeuwen, who is the CEO of WPCS. As a multi‑tenant WordPress advocate, he focuses on helping agencies and product teams turn repeatable work into scalable SaaS/WaaS products. His platform lets agencies and product teams scale one WordPress codebase to tens, hundreds, or thousands of sites – built once, maintained centrally, and updated safely. If you sell or manage many WordPress installations, this conversation is the blueprint for productizing your expertise.

What WPCS Is: Multi‑Tenant WordPress, Explained

WPCS positions WordPress as a product platform rather than a one‑off project: a shared codebase, a consistent plugin stack, and full lifecycle automation. In this model, tenants share the application code and standardized plugins/themes, while each site keeps its own database and uploads. New features and fixes ship as versioned releases that you can test on a subset of sites and then promote or roll back without touching production.

WPCS is the first multi‑tenant WordPress platform that we have found in the world.

In short: you build your application once, then provision any number of tenant sites on top – each acting like a single site for the end user, while you control code centrally.

Unlike a traditional host, WPCS standardizes code and forces consistency where it matters: plugins, themes, and language files are shared, while each site behaves like a normal single site. In other words, multitenancy at WPCS shares plugins, themes, and language files across tenants while each site continues to operate independently as a single site.

You could see us as the sort of very specialized AWS in this space.

Finally, provision and retire tenants programmatically (e.g., via a storefront), so marketing campaigns translate into live sites without manual labor.

WordPress Versioned Updates and Safe Rollouts in WPCS

WPCS treats feature and security updates like product releases: create a new version, test with one or a few tenants, then roll out (or roll back) confidently.

What is unique is the database and the uploads.

Tenants inherit shared code, but their unique data travels with them, keeping content intact during upgrades. Teams can add automated checks and canary moves so a failing test sends a tenant back to the previous version without touching production. That separation lets you iterate on code without risking customer content.

At high tenant counts, orchestration beats manual scaling. WPCS relies on Kubernetes to automate scaling and orchestration. Every tenant runs inside its own container, and those containers are grouped by product and version. This setup ensures resources are used efficiently, updates are isolated, and deployments stay predictable even across thousands of sites. Containers are product‑specific (and version‑specific), so each rollout maps cleanly to the right tenant group.

WaaS vs SaaS (and Why It Matters for Agencies)

Wijnand notes that the shift also changes how teams think about stability and innovation. SaaS-style architecture encourages frequent, smaller deployments that make it easier to test ideas safely and improve performance over time. It’s a mindset shift from reactive project work to proactive platform growth.

WPCS unlocks two common product paths for WordPress builders: SaaS (software as a service) and WaaS (website as a service). The distinction helps agencies move beyond project billing. In this model, your know‑how becomes a packaged product for a niche – spun up in minutes and maintained in bulk, instead of reinvented on every project.

Once you have the base product, everything else you add goes to all customers, and that’s the beauty of it.

When you learn something new about your niche, shipping it to all tenants turns expertise into recurring revenue – not one-off billable hours. As updates roll out across hundreds of instances automatically, agencies discover they can scale without growing their operational overhead or maintenance burden. The SaaS/WaaS approach replaces manual client work with systemic improvement – making WordPress not just flexible, but infinitely renewable for business growth.

Customization at Scale: Trade-Offs That Pay Back

Per-site child themes become a maintenance trap at 100+ sites. WPCS bakes in the discipline to keep code uniform and content/config unique—the only path to predictable updates.

Using something like a child theme for each and every one of your websites… goes out the window.

If each tenant can diverge arbitrarily, every update becomes unpredictable; a shared codebase lets you test once and deploy broadly.

WordPress is powerful, but the complexity is real. As the ecosystem grows, choice overload is a real barrier for newcomers; curated, niche WaaS offerings help non-developers win. By turning your stack into a product, you transfer hard-won choices (and defaults) to customers who don’t want to evaluate 50 plugins.

Key Takeaways for Agencies and Product Teams

• Think product, not projects. Package your niche expertise as a WaaS/SaaS.
• Standardize code; personalize content. Keep updates predictable.
• Use versions + canaries. Test safely, roll forward fast, and roll back instantly.
• Automate provisioning. Tie storefronts to tenant creation/deletion.
• Plan infrastructure. Containers + Kubernetes give you headroom.

Full Conversation with Wijnand van Leeuwen

Want to hear the full conversation with Wijnand? Check out the latest 🎙️ Osom to Know podcast.

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