Kevin Geary Called Breakdance the "Biggest Threat" to Oxygen. Most New Etch Features Now Start in Studio.
In 2023 he objected to a newer builder getting the new features. In 2025 he warned companies against doing it. Now most new features start in Etch Studio, and the company’s FAQ “can’t give an exact timeline” for the ports to WordPress.
Kevin Geary has already described what’s happening to you. He was talking about Oxygen at the time.
Oxygen is the older builder from a company called Soflyy. In April 2023, Geary called Soflyy’s newer builder, Breakdance, “the biggest threat to oxygen in my opinion”. He said Breakdance was getting “more modern features that they’re not bringing to oxygen”.
In May 2025, on an episode of WP Product Talk, he warned companies against moving development attention to a new product and letting the established one fall behind. His advice was not to put your resources only into the newer thing. He did allow that a small company ends up “shuffling people around”.
In August 2026, he unveiled Etch Studio. Studio is a separately priced, hosted product from Digital Gravy, the company behind Etch. The one you may already own is EtchWP, the Etch builder for WordPress. Geary said new work would go to Studio first and reach EtchWP after that: “things will come to Etch Studio and then they will be ported over”.
If you bought EtchWP, in my view you’re the Oxygen customer now.
Second in line, no date
The FAQ on Etch’s pricing page says it outright: “most new features will be built in Etch Studio first”.
Geary calls Studio “the development grounds for where we do things the way they should have been done”. If you bought EtchWP, you’re on the other one.
Got a lifetime deal? Studio isn’t in it. Someone asked Geary whether lifetime deals include Studio, and he said: “No, no, cuz that is etch for WordPress.” Then he added: “This system has direct cost to us.” Hosting explains the separate price.
The reason for building in Studio first is in the FAQ: “it’s much faster to develop there”. Faster for them. You wait for the port.
So when does your port arrive? The FAQ says the company “can’t give an exact timeline”. It also calls EtchWP “absolutely not dead”.
The asset manager, a feature designed for Studio, reached WordPress in version 1.6.0 of EtchWP. That doesn’t give you a date for the next one.
Customers are complaining. In Geary’s own paraphrase of them, “we paid for” EtchWP and “you’re only working on studio”. His answer was that resources would shift to Studio temporarily, “to get it to a deployable, releasable, marketable state. And then we would wrap back around”.
He didn’t say there whether the shift had ended. Temporary or not, it’s the kind of call he warned about in 2025.
Some of it isn’t coming
In August, talking about Studio and WordPress, Geary said: “we want you to have the exact same experience”.
On 22 September, he was talking about a planned view for URL, templating and SEO management, and he said:
That’s one feature area, not every feature. On WordPress, he said, you’d get the interface “as much as we possibly can”, with “some limitations”.
On 20 October, he said this about the ports:
Needs to be. Can be. Start. Who decides what needs to be ported? Will you be told first? Nobody’s said.
The difference from Breakdance is that Digital Gravy says Studio features are meant to come to WordPress. That’s a statement of intent, and Geary has already named a limit.
On 26 February 2025, Soflyy announced that Oxygen lifetime customers would get the rewritten platform at no additional cost. Your EtchWP licence doesn’t get you Studio.
They’ve made this call before
Automatic.css is Digital Gravy’s own framework. Its statement about Oxygen says the company has “officially ended our commitment to ensuring that new features are fully compatible with Oxygen”. The reason it gives is that this work “is not economically feasible”.
The framework still works with Oxygen, and security issues still get addressed. Oxygen was also another company’s builder. But the same page sends you to “a modern, forward-thinking, and forward-moving product like Etch or Bricks”. Etch is theirs.
Now picture a Studio feature that’s expensive to bring to WordPress. In my view, you’ve already read their answer: “not economically feasible”.
And your way out of Studio?
When Geary exported a site from Studio, he said: “There’s your zip file… they are yours. It is your site after all.”
Etch’s docs for Studio describe that download as the build, as plain files, ready for any static host. That isn’t necessarily your editable project: etchwpstudio.com, an independent critical site not run by Etch, says the ZIP holds only rendered output. What about migrating to WordPress? The same site reports a 29 October reply from Geary: “You could just migrate to EtchWP and keep going there”. Etch’s Studio page says “Planned”.
Can you keep and edit a whole Studio project outside Studio, or recreate it in EtchWP? Find out before you commit.
Until a feature is in the EtchWP changelog, I wouldn’t count it as an EtchWP feature.