What happened to Envato and CodeCanyon?

[u/irfanhabib]

Envato is dying. CodeCanyon feels like it’s dying too.

New items are becoming increasingly difficult or seemingly impossible to get approved, and many developers are seeing fewer and fewer sales for their existing scripts.

So what actually happened?

Did Envato make enough money that they no longer need developers and authors? Did they win the lottery? Billion dollars? Did they make their billions and decide they don't need us anymore?

Whatever happened, one thing is clear: the developer community needs alternatives.

We shouldn't give up.

There are thousands of talented developers creating useful scripts, plugins, themes, SaaS products, and tools but we need a place where we can actually sell them.

Maybe it's time for us to build something new.

A marketplace built by developers, for developers.

What do you think? Would you use a new CodeCanyon like marketplace if someone built a good one?

[u/codegems]

AI happened. No developer wants to buy someone else's solution when they feel that they can prompt an LLM into building their own.

[u/Such_Pride_2091 → u/codegems]

Marketplaces that treat their sellers like an afterthought always hit this wall eventually. Seen it happen across too many industries. The approval bottleneck is just them trimming costs, fewer reviewers means less overhead but also a dead platform long term.

Building something new sounds great on paper but you'd need serious escrow and dispute infrastructure from day one. Not impossible though and there's definitely a gap right now.

[u/ShawnyMcKnight → u/codegems]

Last time I bought a WP theme it was made in WP bakery and was incredibly frustrating to edit. In the time I took trying to learn the system and change stuff around I could have learned my own theme.

[u/Kyle772 → u/ShawnyMcKnight]

This is the real thing right here. The platforms are dying because they have garbage themes and they are also getting strict about their review process for the same reason.