The truth about Etch. Five facts. All on the record.
EtchWP is a WordPress plugin sold with lifetime deals. Etch Studio is a separate hosted subscription with the same canvas and the vendor's own database. Here is what that means for you, in five facts, each with a date and a source you can open.
Five facts
Each one is dated and sourced. Open the link and check it.
Lifetime deals don't include Etch Studio.
Asked on stream whether lifetime holders get Studio, the founder answered: "No, no, cuz that is etch for WordPress. That's a WordPress plugin." Studio is a separate checkout.
Is Studio in the lifetime deal? →Studio is a monthly subscription: $59.
Public price since October 14, 2026. EtchWP customers can pay $49 through a separate link if they join by the end of November 2026, and keep it only while they never cancel.
Every price, and what it costs to run →Your project stays in their app.
Studio publishes compiled files to your Cloudflare and offers a ZIP. The project itself (content types, loops, logic, styles and the editor) stays hosted. No Git repository, no re-import. Stop paying and you keep files you can't edit there.
What can you export? →Same canvas. Different backend.
EtchWP keeps your site in your own WordPress. Studio keeps it in the vendor's database. The editor looks the same; who holds your data does not.
EtchWP vs Etch Studio →New architecture goes to Studio first.
On September 14, 2026, staff said relationships are "coming to Etch Studio first." EtchWP went three months without a substantial feature release (July 8 to October 8, 2026). Version 1.7.0 then added Yoast SEO and Rank Math support; data sources, schema view and relationships are not in its changelog.
Is EtchWP still being developed? →
This page reports what was said and when. It does not claim why anyone said it or what they intended.
In their own words
Two years apart. Read them in order.
August 2024, the waiting-list email
“We do it together, or we don't do it at all.”
August 2026, asked about lifetime deals and Studio
“No, no, cuz that is etch for WordPress. That's a WordPress plugin.”
Start here
The first step on the reading path: what Studio is, and whether your license covers it.
- Etch Studio: a proprietary locked-in appLocked in their app. Pay monthly to edit. Leave with a ZIP of compiled files only.
- Is Etch Studio included in the Etch lifetime deal?No — confirmed on stream. LTD covers the WordPress plugin only.
- If you don't need WordPress, what is Etch Studio actually selling?Geary's pitch reframes the product — and the comparison set that follows.
- EtchWP vs Etch Studio: what's actually different?Same Svelte UI; the split is where data lives and who runs the backend.