WordPress 7.0 was expected to land in early April 2026, and once again, it did not. Delays happen, especially with bigger releases, but when a release keeps getting pushed back around one major feature, it is usually a sign that things are more complicated than they first looked.
This is not a small update. WordPress 7.0 is trying to introduce a completely different way of working inside the editor. That alone is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does raise questions about how useful this is going to be in the real world.
Most site owners are not asking for more features inside WordPress. They want their sites to stay fast, stable, easy to update, and easy to manage. They want to publish content without friction and avoid adding more maintenance headaches.
That is really where this release starts to feel disconnected from what people actually need.
To be clear, this is not about WordPress being bad. We still use WordPress every day, we still build almost everything on it, and we are not looking to replace it. The concern is whether core is solving real problems or just giving people more things to manage.
- Real-Time Collaboration sounds impressive but does not match how agencies or businesses actually create content
- The feature introduces unnecessary complexity and risk into publishing workflows
- Increased database activity and syncing will likely strain shared hosting environments
- WordPress continues adding features instead of fixing long-standing usability and performance issues
Real-Time Collaboration Looks Good in a Demo, Not in the Real World
The flagship feature getting all the attention is “Real-Time Collaboration,” which essentially is WordPress trying to replicate the Google Docs experience inside the editor. Multiple users can jump into the same post or page, make edits at the same time, and see those changes reflected instantly. It demos well, it looks modern, and it gives the impression that WordPress is evolving into something more collaborative and advanced.
The problem is that this assumes people are actually writing content inside WordPress in the first place, which, in most professional environments, is not how things work. Agencies are not drafting blog posts directly in WordPress. They are writing in structured environments where revisions, comments, approvals, and version control exist for a reason. By the time the content ever reaches WordPress, it has already been reviewed, edited, and approved.
Trying to move that entire workflow into a live editing environment inside WordPress is not an upgrade. It is a step backward. It removes guardrails, introduces risk, and encourages a process that experienced teams have already moved away from because it creates problems.
This Completely Ignores How Agencies Actually Work
There is a clear disconnect between the people building this feature and the people who would realistically use it. Content does not go from idea to published page in one sitting, and it certainly does not happen with multiple people typing into the same interface at the same time, hoping everything stays intact.
A typical workflow involves drafts, internal edits, client feedback, revisions, and final approval before anything is published. That process exists because publishing mistakes have real consequences. Whether it is incorrect information, broken formatting, or unfinished content slipping through, the impact is immediate and visible.
Real-Time Collaboration inside WordPress does not improve that process. It can completely eliminate it. It creates a lot more opportunities for mistakes to happen in an environment that is directly tied to the live site. It is hard to imagine many agencies changing their entire workflow just because WordPress suddenly made this available.
We already see enough accidental publishing problems from simple things like someone editing the wrong page, saving over Elementor changes, publishing unfinished content, or making changes directly on a live page without realizing it. Giving multiple people live access to the same content at the same time only increases the chances of that happening.
And Small Businesses Are Not the Audience Either
If this feature is not built for agencies, the assumption might be that smaller businesses will benefit from it. But that doesn’t hold up either. Most small businesses are not collaborating in real time on website content. In many cases, they have one person occasionally updating the site, and even that is usually done infrequently.
Real-Time Collaboration only becomes useful when multiple contributors are actively working at the same time, and that scenario is far less common than the feature assumes. What you end up with is a feature that is too risky and unnecessary for agencies, and largely irrelevant for smaller teams.
That leaves a very narrow group of users who might use it, and it is difficult to justify adding this level of complexity to WordPress for such a limited use case. And lets not forget, this is only useful for those using the WordPress editor. If they use Elementor, Divi or Beaver Builder, the real-time collaboration goes out the window.
The Performance Impact Is Being Overlooked
Even if you ignore the workflow issues, there is a much bigger technical concern that deserves attention. Real-Time Collaboration requires constant synchronization between users, which means constant communication with the database, frequent writes, and continuous background updates.
That is one of the areas WordPress is reportedly still trying to work through. Early versions relied heavily on post meta and background sync activity, and that creates a lot of overhead. The latest direction, and one of the reasons for the delay, is that they are looking to move the collaboration data into a dedicated database table, while also handling part of the syncing through JavaScript using a system called Yjs.
That may not sound like a big deal on paper, but every time the editor is open, there is ongoing syncing, background communication, and data moving between users and the server.
On a small site with one person editing occasionally, that may not matter much. But on busier sites, especially those on shared hosting, that kind of constant background activity can start adding up quickly.
We already see shared hosting environments struggle with things like WooCommerce admin searches, Elementor autosaves, backup plugins running in the background, and bloated security plugins. Adding constant real-time syncing on top of that is probably not going to help.
Increased CPU usage, higher memory consumption, and more database I/O are not theoretical concerns. They are the same issues that lead to slow admin panels, degraded performance, and hosting companies recommending upgrades.
The bigger issue is that you may not even be using the feature and still end up dealing with the overhead it introduces. That is where this starts to feel less like innovation and more like unnecessary weight being added to every site.
WordPress Keeps Adding Instead of Fixing
This is part of a larger pattern that is becoming harder to ignore. WordPress still has plenty of areas that need improvement. The editing experience is inconsistent, Gutenberg still feels unfinished, so it’s not used in many real-world scenarios, and performance issues continue to show up on sites that are not heavily optimized.
Instead of focusing on those areas, the platform continues to add features that sound impressive but do not solve the problems most users are actually dealing with.
There are still basic problems WordPress users run into every day that have never really been solved properly. Slow admin areas, inconsistent block editor behavior, confusing plugin conflicts, media library limitations, and updates breaking things unexpectedly are still much bigger issues for most site owners than whether three people can type into the same post at the same time.
That is why tools like Elementor and Divi continue to be widely used. They are not perfect, but they are predictable, they are usable, and they solve real problems. WordPress core, on the other hand, seems increasingly focused on redefining workflows instead of improving them.
This Should Have Been a Plugin, Not Core
If Real-Time Collaboration ends up being useful for a subset of users, there is nothing wrong with that. WordPress has always had a place for specialized functionality, and that place is the plugin ecosystem. Features that introduce complexity, require additional resources, and only serve a portion of users are exactly what plugins are meant for.
We saw this with ClassicPress, a fork of WordPress 4.9, which was built to specifically avoid Gutenberg and keep the old editor experience. Of course, it was forked so long ago that we now have compatibility issues with some newer plugins, but the concept is the same – stop the bloat.
Pushing the new collaboration feature into WordPress core is forcing every site to carry the weight of it, whether it is used or not. That goes against one of the core strengths of the platform, which has always been the ability to keep things lean and only add what you actually need.
Real-Time Collaboration does not meet the bar for something that belongs in core. It is not universally useful, it does not align with how most teams work, and it introduces overhead that many environments are not equipped to handle. This is the kind of feature that should be optional, not baked into the foundation of every WordPress install.
If someone genuinely needs this feature, great. Install it as a plugin. That is exactly what the plugins are for.
Where This Starts to Matter for Site Owners
This feature is coming to WordPress. The release may be delayed, the technical details may still be changing, and some of the rough edges may get cleaned up before launch, but Real-Time Collaboration is clearly the direction WordPress wants to go.
That means most site owners are eventually going to have to adapt to it, whether they want to or not.
That is really the concern. Every major release adds a little more complexity, a few more moving parts, and a few more things that can affect performance, compatibility, and long-term maintenance.
For site owners, that usually shows up later as slower admin areas, more plugin conflicts, more troubleshooting, and more time spent dealing with issues that did not exist before.
The Gap Between Features and Reality Is Growing
Most businesses do not need more features inside WordPress. They need a site that is fast, stable, easy to update, and built around workflows that make sense. Real-Time Collaboration does not really help with any of that. If anything, it creates more moving parts for site owners to think about.
There is a growing gap between what WordPress is adding and what most users actually need. Bridging that gap often comes down to simplifying things, not adding more. Keeping builds lean, controlling what gets introduced, and focusing on performance and structure tends to produce better results than chasing every new feature that comes along.
As an SEO and Web Design company that only handles WordPress sites, we spend a lot of our time chasing updates and broken features and plugins for clients. Cleaning up bloated builds, tightening performance, and making sure the site is doing what it is supposed to do without unnecessary overhead. That is also where most businesses start to realize that having the right setup matters more than having the latest features. It also ties directly into SEO, because speed, structure, and clarity all play a role in how well a site performs in search.
WordPress Is Still the Right Platform – That Is Not the Problem
None of this changes the fact that WordPress is still the best overall platform for most businesses. It is flexible, scalable, widely supported, and gives you full control over your site in a way most closed platforms simply do not. After 15 years of building on WordPress, we are not looking to replace it, and we have not seen an alternative that would justify making that switch for the kinds of sites we build and support.
The issue is not WordPress itself. It is the direction certain features are taking inside the core software. There is a difference between improving a platform and overcomplicating it, and that line is starting to get blurred. Real-Time Collaboration falls squarely into that category for me. It is not solving a widespread problem, but it is adding weight and complexity that every site now has to account for.
For most sites, WordPress still does exactly what it should do. You can build fast, stable, SEO-friendly websites that perform extremely well when they are set up correctly. That has not changed, and it is not going anywhere. The goal is not to abandon WordPress. It is to be more intentional about how it is used, what gets added, and what gets ignored.
Where This Is Headed
WordPress 7.0 may still ship with adjustments, and some of the rough edges may get smoothed out. But the bigger concern is not this one release; it is the direction behind it. If core continues moving toward feature-heavy functionality that only a small percentage of users will adopt, the platform risks becoming harder to manage for the majority.
That does not happen all at once. It happens gradually, release by release, until one day you realize managing a WordPress site feels harder than it used to for no real reason.
And that is the part that matters. The competition is watching.
Is WordPress Starting to Feel Harder to Manage?
If you are unsure how a release like this impacts your site, or you are already starting to feel the effects of added complexity, it usually helps to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.
Most issues we see are not caused by one feature or one plugin, but by layers of decisions that build up over time. That is where we spend most of our time. Reviewing setups, simplifying what does not need to be there, and making sure WordPress is working the way it should, instead of fighting against it. Sometimes that is a quick cleanup. Sometimes it is a deeper rebuild. Either way, the goal is the same: keep the site fast, stable, and easy to manage.
If you want someone to take a look at your site, you can reach out to Kim and Conor. No sales process, no handoff to someone else. Just a straightforward look at what is working, what is not, and what actually needs to be done.
