In general, I've been maintaining a few WordPress-native sites since about 2018 without any issues, but these past few months have created several semi-connected experiences that seem highly suspicious to have happened all at once:
1. My big-box email hosting provider downgraded my website limit to 3 sites total. As a hobby, I've made about 6-7 sites, so I had to move, though it seems like this site limit is becoming industry-standard.
2. Another change at the same time has been that CardDAV server support has effectively been deprecated, making it difficult to synchronize contacts. My new hosting provider doesn't seem to host CardDAV, so I may have to self-host my contacts soon.
3. I had had an email list, but apparently sending via SMTP is no longer natively run through the CRM anymore without a paid service or self-hosting?
4. I've had organic traffic of 1-5 people on any given day to my sites (it's boring, evergreen content), but as of a few weeks ago my blog-posting site was dropped down to nothing.
5. When I was poking around the zone editor, it seems I can only ever update MX records anymore on the hosting site. I'm guessing that's a standard hosting provider situation?
I'm not presently getting paid to do what I love (i.e., tech work), so I'd like some perspective. Are these issues part of a well-connected effort to standardize the walled-garden approach of the internet, dark patterns to steer an upsell, or simply bad luck on my end for everything to be happening all at once?
