running an agency is hard. learn the easy way.

The hosting industry is growing, but for many providers, profitability is getting harder. Why?

The 2026 Web Hosting Trends Report, conducted by CloudLinux and WebPros, surveyed 446 hosting providers worldwide to find out what’s actually happening across the industry.

The picture is an industry that’s growing but margins are squeezed from every direction. The response is a decisive move upmarket with dedicated offerings, investing more heavily in automation, and exploring how AI can reshape operations.

In this session, we’ll unpack the key findings: the biggest challenges providers face, the top growth opportunities, the current realities of AI, and what the data signals for the year ahead. You’ll leave with a data-backed view of where the hosting industry stands, how your priorities compare, and which trends are worth acting on now.

I’ll show that most agencies already have the beginnings of a design system, even if they do not call it that or fully realise its value. In this 30-minute talk, I will give a practical crash course in design systems for web agencies that do not have time for a three-month deep dive. I will explore how agencies are often already working with shared patterns, reusable components and consistent ways of building, but are missing the structure and documentation that turn those habits into a real strategic advantage. 

From component and pattern libraries to design tokens and clear documentation, I will explain how formalising what already exists can help agencies work more efficiently, reduce duplication across projects and position themselves to win larger, more ambitious clients.

I will also look ahead to an AI-first future and argue that, as development becomes increasingly automated, design systems will be one of the key things that make agencies more valuable rather than less, because they provide the structure, clarity and strategic thinking that AI alone cannot.

Most agencies don’t fail because they can’t get clients. They fail when they start growing.

Karim has seen it happen over and over. That 8 to 15 person range where everything that used to work just stops. Hiring outpaces training, scope starts slipping, margins get tight, and suddenly you’re managing fires all day instead of leading.

He’s been running Crowd Favorite, widely recognized as the original enterprise WordPress agency, for over 15 years. He’s scaled through every stage and knows exactly where the cracks show up.

In this session, Karim breaks down how to stabilize your margins, tighten your offers so scope creep stops draining you, build repeatable services that create real recurring revenue, and structure your team so you’re not the bottleneck. He’ll also get into where AI actually fits into your workflow right now without overpromising to clients.

If you’re in that in between stage where you’re growing but feeling the cracks, this is the session you need to be at.

Many web agencies dream of building their own product. Far too often they end up repackaging client work as “innovation” and wondering why it doesn’t scale. In this talk, you’ll learn why turning an agency into a product company isn’t a natural evolution. It’s a strategic transformation, and most teams get it wrong.

Based on hard-earned lessons from the trenches, this session unpacks the traps that catch nearly everyone: building too custom, too technical, too slow, and with too little focus, all while underestimating what product development actually costs. You’ll discover why a crystal-clear product vision and a sharply defined Ideal Customer Profile matter far more than any feature list.

I’ll walk through the critical journey from founding to Product-Market Fit, with a spotlight on the phase most people misunderstand: unlocking growth. This is where your Go-to-Market strategy, value frameworks, and sales playbooks either carry you forward or quietly kill the whole thing.

Finally, I’ll get into how agencies should actually organize themselves, how to separate product from project work, and why scaling too soon is one of the most expensive mistakes you can make. By the end, you’ll have a clear playbook for whether your agency should build a product at all, and if so, how to do it without burning the house down.

In this talk, Aurelio explores where agencies can create the most value in a world where websites are cheaper and easier than ever to produce. As vibecoding turns more people into “web developers”, he argues that the real opportunity is not just in building sites quickly, but in keeping them running, improving and maintained over time. The cheaper a website is to create, the more costly it can become to manage, and that opens the door for agencies to build stronger recurring revenue through care plans and long-term support.

He also looks at why making knowledge more accessible does not weaken agencies, but often strengthens them. More clients can now attempt things themselves, but that often leads them back to the providers they trust when they realise their own time is more valuable than the effort of figuring it all out alone. In a world where information is abundant, trust becomes the thing people are really paying for.

Finally, Aurelio makes the case that automation is only as powerful as the expertise behind it. If an agency’s craft is solid, automation can multiply its output, margins and impact. If it is not, it simply scales weak work faster. This is a talk about why genuine expertise matters more, not less, in an AI-driven industry, and how agencies that combine real skill with the right automation will be the ones that grow.

Every project sits somewhere between “fast turnaround” and “fully custom” – and AI is changing what’s possible at both ends. This session walks through a practical agency workflow where Brizy AI handles the quick wins, and Figma’s AI-powered design tools feed seamlessly into Brizy for more involved builds. One workflow, adaptable to any brief.

Most agencies are experimenting with AI tools and agents. Lone Rock Point went further and onboarded an AI agent just like we onboard new employees (the human kind, lol).

This session is the story of adding a functioning member of the Lone Rock Point team using OpenClaw. It has a name, a role, a personality, access to the agency’s systems, and actual responsibilities: morning briefings, pipeline monitoring, meeting prep, weekly reporting, social media management, and more. It even has it’s own phone number. This isn’t a demo of ChatGPT prompts or Claude code skills. It’s an alternative approach that feels different.

The result is integrating AI as an actual team member into the daily rhythm of an agency. Hear what changes when you stop treating AI as a utility and start treating it like a colleague. Attendees will leave with lessons learned from the setup process and a clear picture of what’s possible right now for agencies of any size.

On LinkedIn, many founders and professionals stay stuck in a cycle of inconsistent posting, playing it safe, or overthinking what to say. The result is a vanilla presence that looks fine on the surface but doesn’t build trust or attract the right clients.

This talk shows you how to move from being the world’s best-kept secret on LinkedIn, stuck with a ghost-town presence, to becoming a relatable expert. Someone your ideal clients recognise, trust, and want to work with.

Here’s what will shift for you:

What’s been holding you back from showing up and how to move past your own LinkedIn Berlin Wall of Fear.

How to think about your content so it actually resonates with the clients you want to attract.

What it really takes in 2026 to build trust on LinkedIn and turn visibility into meaningful conversations.

Your clients need accessible websites to comply with laws and reach more people. But for agencies, accessibility is more than just a compliance checkbox. It’s a powerful opportunity to create ongoing value and predictable revenue.

In this session, Amber Hinds, CEO of Equalize Digital, will show how web agencies can turn accessibility into a scalable, recurring service offering. You’ll learn how to position accessibility in sales conversations, package services like audits, remediation, and monitoring, and build long-term client relationships rooted in continuous improvement—not just one-time work.

Whether you’re just getting started or looking to expand your existing services, this talk will provide practical strategies to help you grow revenue while making the web more inclusive.

 If you’re feeling overwhelmed with AI right now, you’re not alone. There’s so much noise about what it can do, but very little about what it’s actually doing inside real web agencies and digital marketing businesses right now. In this session, we’re going to cut through that noise.

I’ll show you what happened when we decided to dig deep and build AI-powered systems across our entire agency, covering everything from sales and onboarding to reporting, audits, strategy and beyond. I’ll walk through real demos of the tools we use, share the honest business impact, and show how we’ve improved operations by up to 7x, reduced losses, and delivered a dramatically better experience for our clients.

You’ll leave with practical ways to start integrating AI into your own agency right now, plus a free AI Agency Toolkit to help you get started.

In this fireside Q&A, Kevin Gibbons shares how agencies can win better clients without chasing shortcuts or silver bullets. Drawing on years of building Re:signal, he will unpack what actually drives sustainable growth. Expect practical insights on client acquisition, positioning, and long-term thinking that agency owners can apply immediately to build a steadier, more resilient pipeline for lasting, profitable agency growth.

The world’s biggest e-commerce brands spend millions testing and refining the features that drive discovery, conversions, and loyalty. As a WordPress agency, you don’t need their budget to deliver the same results to your clients.

In this talk, Katie Keith (founder of Barn2 Plugins) walks through four real-world case studies, unpacking the winning features behind each brand and showing exactly how to replicate them on WooCommerce client sites using the right plugins.

Whether you’re scoping a new project or looking to add value to an existing one, you’ll leave with practical ideas to build into your standard recommendations – and a set of high-impact optional extras to present to clients who want to take their store further.

Ever been looking for information online? You click into a website, get frustrated because it doesn’t meet expectations and leave. That’s happening on millions of websites everyday. Evicting great fit customers because the site is too frustrating. 

Accessibility is the answer to “why this site doesn’t meet expectations and is frustrating”. Fixing it fixes revenue for your customers. But not every client has the budget for a full audit and remediation. This session teaches how to prioritize which accessibility fixes have the most impact to make sites easier to keep customers & avoid legal trouble. This is practical, business-focused advice that helps attendees convert simple audits into revenue.

Building a reliable team is one of the hardest parts of agency growth, especially when every hire feels high stakes. In this session, Natasha Golinsky will break down the practical system she uses to hire well, set clear expectations, create real accountability and delegate with confidence. She’ll share how to spot the right fit, avoid common hiring mistakes and build a team structure that actually works, so your agency can grow without everything resting on you.