You look after a handful of client sites, maybe a few dozen. Many of them were built the same way: Kadence for the design, LearnDash for a course area, The Events Calendar for workshops and meetups, sometimes GiveWP for donations. It was a sensible stack when you built it. Now the renewal invoices are bigger, the products sit under a new company portal, and clients have started asking you whether they should be worried.
This is a working plan for moving those client sites onto one theme and a small set of plugins you can support for years: Reign for the design, Learnomy for courses, Eventonomy for events, and BuddyNext when a client wants a members’ area. It covers which clients to move and which to leave alone, the order of the move on each site, what it costs before and after, and how to tell clients without scaring them. We make all four products at Wbcom Designs, so test everything on staging and judge it for yourself.
If you want the background on what changed at Liquid Web and the full list of options, read our StellarWP alternatives guide first. This post assumes you have read it and decided to look at moving some clients.
What a typical client stack costs now
The StellarWP name is gone. Its old website now sends you to Liquid Web, whose software menu lists four products: Kadence, LearnDash, The Events Calendar and Give. On 18 October 2026, the official pricing pages listed these annual plans:
| Product | Lowest paid plan listed | Next plan |
|---|---|---|
| Kadence | Pro, $299 a year | Elite, $499 a year |
| LearnDash | Pro, $399 a year | Elite, $599 a year |
| The Events Calendar | Pro, $399 a year | Elite, $599 a year |
For a client site running all three on their entry plans, that is $1,097 a year before hosting, forms or anything else. If the client uses the free Kadence theme, it is $798. Check the LearnDash, The Events Calendar and Kadence pages yourself on the day you plan, because prices change, and check how many sites each of your current licences actually covers.
Step zero: sort your clients before you touch a site
Do not move a client because you are annoyed with a vendor. Move a client because the move is good for them. The easiest way to keep that straight is to put every client into one of three groups before you do anything else.
| Group | Who belongs here | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Move soon | Renewal due in the next three months, the site uses only common features, and the client is open to change | Plan the move to finish before the renewal date |
| Move at renewal | Renewal is further out, or the site is busy right now (a launch, an event season, an enrolment rush) | Rehearse on staging now, go live in the quiet month before renewal |
| Leave alone | The site depends on a premium add-on with no replacement, the client is happy and the budget is fine, or the site is being retired anyway | Renew, keep it updated, revisit next year |
Write the renewal date next to every client. That date is your real deadline. A move that goes live the week after a renewal has already been paid for saves nothing for a year.
What replaces each piece
| On the client site today | After the move | Free plugin covers |
|---|---|---|
| Kadence theme (header, footer, colours, layouts) | Reign theme | Reign is paid: $99 a year or $249 once for one site |
| Kadence Blocks on pages | Keep the Kadence Blocks plugin | It is a separate free plugin and works under any theme |
| LearnDash courses | Learnomy | Courses, checkout, memberships, quizzes, certificates |
| The Events Calendar | Eventonomy | Unlimited events and RSVPs, waitlists, recurring series, four calendar views, venues and organisers |
| Event Tickets (paid tickets) | Eventonomy Pro | Paid tickets through Stripe, PayPal or WooCommerce need Pro |
| GiveWP | Keep GiveWP | We do not make a donation plugin, and it works fine under Reign |
| A forum, member area or bbPress setup | BuddyNext, with Jetonomy for forums | Activity feed, spaces, profiles, member directory, notifications, moderation |
Two of those rows are things you keep, not replace. That is on purpose. A move goes faster and breaks less when you only swap what you have a reason to swap.
What it costs after the move
From the Wbcom pricing pages on the same date, for one client site:
| Setup | Per year |
|---|---|
| Reign + all free plugins (Learnomy, Eventonomy, BuddyNext) | $99 |
| Reign + Eventonomy Pro (paid tickets) | $198 |
| Reign + Learnomy Pro + Eventonomy Pro | $347 |
| Reign + Learnomy Pro + Eventonomy Pro + BuddyNext Pro | $496 |
Agencies usually care more about the multi-site tiers. Reign’s Agency licence covers up to 20 sites for $249 a year. Learnomy Pro and BuddyNext Pro each have an unlimited-site Agency tier at $399 a year, and Eventonomy Pro’s unlimited tier is $249 a year. Every one of them also sells a lifetime licence if your clients prefer one payment. The current numbers are on the Reign pricing page, which lists every Wbcom plugin in one place.
Most client sites need fewer Pro plugins than you expect. A charity that runs free workshops and one short course may need nothing beyond Reign. Start every client on the free plugins and add Pro only when a specific feature is missing.
The move, one client site at a time
The order below keeps each step small. After every step the site works, so you can pause between steps for days or weeks without leaving a client half-moved.
Step 1: inventory and backup
For each site, write down: the courses and how many students are partway through; upcoming events and whether any have tickets on sale; donation forms; the Kadence header, footer and any hooked sections; pages built with Kadence Blocks; and every add-on plugged into LearnDash or The Events Calendar. Then take a full backup and confirm it restores. Keep this list in the client’s folder. It is also your checklist at the end.
Step 2: the theme first
Swap Kadence for Reign on a staging copy while LearnDash and The Events Calendar keep running. Reign styles LearnDash out of the box (the Reign LMS documentation lists exactly how), and it includes templates for The Events Calendar’s event lists, so both keep looking right under the new theme.
- Rebuild the header, footer and colours in Reign’s Customizer from your notes.
- Recreate any Kadence hooked sections the client still wants. These belonged to the theme, so they do not travel.
- Leave Kadence Blocks active. Pages built with it keep working.
- Check the home page, a course, an event and the donation form on a phone.
Then go live with the theme on a quiet day and let the client live with it for a couple of weeks. This one step often removes the Kadence Pro renewal on its own.
Step 3: events, between event dates
Eventonomy’s free plugin includes an importer for The Events Calendar (and EventON, Events Manager, WP Event Manager and Sugar Calendar). It reads the old plugin without changing it, shows a preview before writing anything, runs large imports in the background, and keeps redirects from the old event addresses so links in old newsletters and social posts still land somewhere useful. Each run can be undone.
The thing to plan around: orders, sold tickets and check-in records do not move. That history belongs to the old system. So:
- Pick a gap between events. Move events when no event with tickets on sale is coming up, or let the current event finish on the old system first.
- Export attendee lists for recent and upcoming paid events before you switch, so the client still has them.
- Set up tickets again in Eventonomy Pro for future paid events, with the same prices.
- Check the calendar views the client links to (month, list, grid or upcoming) and update any menu links.
Free events and RSVPs are simpler. Eventonomy’s free plugin handles RSVPs with a waitlist, guest RSVPs, custom RSVP questions, add-to-calendar links and reminder emails a day and an hour before.
Step 4: courses
Move the courses last, because they carry the most student history. Learnomy’s free migration wizard moves courses, lessons, LearnDash topics, quizzes, enrolments and each student’s progress. Certificates, per-question quiz scores and anything to do with payments stay behind, and you set prices and certificate templates again after the import.
We wrote the full course move, with a student-by-student check and a six-week timeline, in moving a course site off LearnDash and Kadence. Use that as your playbook for this step. The short version: preview on staging, run it, check five real students, plan any recurring subscriptions before you switch anything off, then go live in a quiet week.
Step 5: community, only if the client wants it
Some clients have members who would talk to each other if there were somewhere to do it: alumni of a course, regulars at monthly meetups, volunteers. That is where BuddyNext comes in. Its free plugin adds an activity feed, spaces (groups), member profiles and a directory, notifications and moderation. Forums and Q&A come from Jetonomy, and private messages need MediaVerse active, as the Reign plugin guide explains.
Do not add a community to a client site just because you can. A members’ area with nobody in it looks worse than no members’ area. Add it when the client has a group of people who already want to talk.
Step 6: clean up at the renewal date
Keep the old plugins installed but inactive for a month after each move. Deactivating keeps their data in the database, so you can answer questions about an old enrolment or an old event registration. When the month is up and the renewal date arrives, let the old licences lapse and remove the plugins.
Running this across many clients
Moving one site is a project. Moving twenty is a process. A few habits make the difference.
- Do a pilot first. Pick your simplest client in the “move soon” group, ideally one you have a good relationship with, and do the whole thing slowly. Write down every surprise.
- Build a staging template. Once the pilot is done, keep a clean staging site with Reign set up the way you like: your default header layout, your colour starting points, the plugins you always use. New moves start from it.
- Turn your notes into a checklist. The inventory list from step 1 plus the surprises from the pilot become a one-page checklist for every following site.
- Batch by stack, not by client size. Sites with events but no courses are quick. Sites with courses, paid tickets and donations take longest. Do the quick ones together.
- Book moves into quiet weeks. Use your client renewal dates and each client’s busy season to fill a calendar. Never schedule two complicated moves in the same week.
- Keep one person on support after each move. The first week after go-live is when clients and their members notice small things.
A worked example: one client site
Numbers make this easier to picture, so here is a typical client, made up but built from the kind of site we see often. A yoga studio runs monthly weekend workshops, a free beginners’ series every Tuesday, and one paid online course for people who cannot come in person. It also takes small donations for a community class fund. The site runs Kadence Pro, LearnDash Pro, The Events Calendar Pro with paid workshop tickets, and GiveWP.
Before: $299 + $399 + $399 = $1,097 a year in theme and plugin renewals, plus GiveWP, which does not change.
The plan:
- Week 1: inventory, backup, staging copy. The list shows 1 course with 140 students, 38 of them partway through; 3 upcoming workshops, 1 with tickets on sale; 2 donation forms; a Kadence header with a sticky “Book a class” button; 6 pages built with Kadence Blocks.
- Week 2: Reign on staging, header rebuilt with the same “Book a class” button, studio colours set. The studio owner clicks through it on their phone and asks for a bigger logo. Theme goes live on a Monday.
- Week 4: the workshop with tickets on sale happens on the old system. The following Monday, with nothing on sale, events are imported into Eventonomy on staging, checked, then on the live site. Attendee lists for past paid workshops are exported first. Next month’s workshop goes on sale through Eventonomy Pro.
- Week 6: the course moves to Learnomy after a staging run and a check of five students, including two of the 38 who are partway through. The course price is set again in Learnomy’s checkout.
- Week 10: old plugins removed. GiveWP and Kadence Blocks stay.
After: Reign at $99 plus Eventonomy Pro at $99 for paid tickets, so $198 a year. The course runs on Learnomy’s free plugin because the studio does not need cohorts, gradebooks or company seats. The studio saves about $900 a year, and you have one fewer vendor to watch for every site built this way.
Your real clients will differ, and some will need more Pro plugins than this. The pattern holds, though: theme first, events in a gap, courses last, and keep whatever is not causing a problem.
Pricing the migration work
The plugins are cheaper after a move. Your time is not free. Decide how you charge before you start, because clients will ask.
- A fixed fee per site works well once your pilot shows how long a typical move takes. Price by stack: theme only, theme plus events, or the full set with courses.
- Folding it into a care plan works for clients already on a monthly plan. The move becomes part of the year’s work, and the licence saving helps pay for it.
- Splitting the saving is a fair middle ground: the client keeps part of the first year’s saving and the rest covers your work.
Whatever you choose, show the client the before and after licence costs in plain numbers. It turns a technical change into a decision they can actually make.
How to tell your clients
Clients do not need the history of a software company. They need to know three things: is my site safe, what will change, and what will it cost. Here is a short note you can adapt:
The company behind some of the plugins your site uses has reorganised, and their prices have gone up. Nothing is broken and your site is safe. We would like to move your site to a setup we can support for the long term, before your next renewal on [date]. Your pages, members and content stay. The design will look a little different (we will show you first), and the yearly plugin costs drop from about [old] to [new]. We will do the work on a private copy first, and switch over on a quiet day. Happy to talk it through.
Show them the staging site before you go live. A client who has clicked around the new version on their own phone signs off much faster than one who has only read an email.
Then decide what to do with the saving. Some agencies pass it on to the client. Others fold it into a care plan that now includes the updates and checks they were doing anyway. Either is fair. Just decide before you send the note, so the numbers in it are the numbers you mean.
What stays the same
It helps to tell clients, and yourself, how much does not change:
- WordPress, the hosting and the domain.
- Every user account and password.
- Pages, blog posts and menus (menus may need re-placing in the new header).
- Kadence Blocks pages, as long as the plugin stays active.
- GiveWP donation forms and donor history.
- WooCommerce, forms and email marketing tools.
What changes is the theme and the two plugins that run courses and events, plus the bits of history those plugins do not carry: sold tickets, certificates and quiz score details.
When to leave a client where they are
Some clients should stay on the stack they have, at least for now:
- The site depends on a premium add-on that has no equivalent yet, such as a specific reporting tool the client uses every week.
- The client runs a large paid event calendar with tickets always on sale, and there is no gap to move in.
- The client has hundreds of recurring course subscribers and no appetite for asking them to re-subscribe.
- The client is happy, the renewal fits the budget, and they have asked you not to change anything.
Put those clients in the “leave alone” group, renew them, and look again next year. A move you talked a happy client into is the one you will hear about for months.
Questions agencies ask
Can I move only the theme on a client site?
Yes. Reign styles LearnDash and includes templates for The Events Calendar’s event lists, so swapping only the theme is a complete project, and it removes the Kadence Pro renewal by itself.
Does the events importer change anything in The Events Calendar?
No. It reads from it, previews first, and each run can be undone. The old plugin’s data stays as it was until you remove the plugin.
What happens to links to old event pages?
The importer keeps redirects from the old event addresses, so links in old emails and posts still work. Check a few after the import.
What about GiveWP?
Keep it. We do not make a donation plugin, and there is no reason to move donors when nothing is wrong.
Do I need the Pro versions on every client site?
No. The free Learnomy, Eventonomy and BuddyNext plugins run a complete site. Add Pro when a client needs paid tickets, cohorts, selling seats to companies or the other Pro features.
Can our team try it before we commit?
Yes. Open the Eventonomy sandbox and the Learnomy sandbox, and set up Reign on one of your own staging sites. Nothing touches a client site.
Where to start this week
List your clients, write the renewal date next to each, and sort them into the three groups. Pick one pilot from “move soon”. Make a staging copy and swap the theme. That afternoon tells you most of what the rest of the work looks like.
If you would rather hand some of the work over, our team runs these moves for agencies and site owners: we rehearse on staging, check real members and students, and go live on a date you choose. Ask about our WordPress maintenance and migration help. And if you have only a couple of client sites with courses, start with our step-by-step guide to your options when your course plugin changes, which covers the calmer “stay or test” paths too.