CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress Matt Mullenweg She launched a scathing attack on a rival company this week, calling it WP Engine “WordPress Cancer.”
Mullenweg criticized the company – which was marketing the open source WordPress project. Since 2010 – To make a profit without offering much in return, while at the same time disabling the key features that make WordPress a powerful platform in the first place.
For context, WordPress enables More than 40% The Internet is open source, and while any individual or company is free to take on an open source project and run a website themselves, a number of companies have emerged to sell hosting services and technical expertise on the back of this. Includes automaticwhich Mullenweg founded in 2005 to monetize the project he had created two years earlier; and WP Engine, a managed WordPress hosting provider that has raised nearly $300 million in funding over its 14-year history, the bulk of that funding coming from $250 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake In 2018.
It is worth noting that Automattic has a history of supporting WordPress hosting companies, as Invested in WP Engine herself in 2011, while Mullenweg also Speak in WP Engine conference last year. Furthermore, Automattic also bought a majority stake in WordPress hosting company Pressable. Back in 2016as well as Gridpane In 2022.
But in my talk this week in Worldcamp USA 2024At a WordPress-focused conference in Portland, Oregon, Mullenweg didn’t hesitate to criticize WP Engine. Mullenweg took to the stage and read: Post a post He just posted on his personal blog, where he points out that,Five for the future“Investment Commitments Made by Automattic” and WP enginewith Former Contributor 3900 hours per week, and The last Contribute only 40 hours.
While he acknowledged that these numbers are just a “proxy,” and may not be entirely accurate, Mullenweg said the disparity in contributions is notable, as both Automattic and WP Engine are “roughly the same size, with revenues in the half-billion ($) range.”
Mullenweg has criticized at least one other major web hosting company in the past, accusing GoDaddy of profiting from an open source project without offering anything meaningful in return — more specifically, He called GodaddyParasitic company“An existential threat to the future of WordPress.”
In his latest attack, Mullenweg didn’t stop at WP Engine, but extended his criticism to the company’s main investor.
The company (WP Engine) is controlled by Silver Lake, a private equity firm with $102 billion in assets “Under management,” Mullenweg said. “Silver Lake doesn’t care about your open source principles, they just want a return on capital. So at this point I’m asking everyone in the WordPress community to vote with your wallet. Who are you going to give your money to — someone who will feed the ecosystem, or someone who will extract every bit of value from it until it withers?”
In response to Question from an audience member Later, when asked to clarify whether Mullenweg was asking WordPress users to boycott WP Engine, he said he hoped all WP Engine customers would watch his presentation, and when the time comes for them to renew their contracts, they should think about their next steps.
“There are some other really hungry hosts out there – Hostinger, Bluehost Cloud, Compressible “And so on, I would love to have that work,” Mullenweg said. “You might even get faster performance when you switch to someone else, and it’s never been easier to switch. That’s part of the idea of freeing up data. It’s like one day’s work to turn your site into something else, and I would highly encourage you to think about that when your contract comes up for renewal, if you’re currently a WP Engine customer.”
“Cancer in WordPress”
In response to sensation who Continue talkingMolinoweg Post Follow the blogHe described WP Engine as a “cancer” to WordPress. “It’s important to remember that cancer will spread if left unchecked,” he wrote. “WP Engine sets a poor standard that others may look at and think is acceptable to replicate.”
Mullenweg said WP Engine is taking advantage of the confusion between the WordPress project and the commercial services company WP Engine.
“We must say and repeat: WP Engine is not WordPress,” Mullenweg wrote. “My mother was confused and thought WP Engine was something official. Their entire branding, marketing, advertising, and promise to customers is that they give you WordPress, but they don’t. They profit from the confusion.”
Mullenweg also said that WP Engine is actively selling an inferior product, because the core WordPress project stores every change made to allow users to revert their content to a previous version — something WP Engine disables, according to His support page.
While customers can request to enable reviews, support only extends to three reviews, which are automatically deleted after 60 days. WP Engine recommends that customers use a “third-party editing system” if they need comprehensive review management. The reason for this, according to Mullenweg, is simple — to save money.
“They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that money protecting your content,” Mullenweg claims. “This strikes at the heart of what WordPress does, and it destroys it, the integrity of your content. If you make a mistake, you have no way to recover your content, which violates the core promise of what WordPress does, which is to manage and protect your content.”
TechCrunch has reached out to WP Engine for comment, and we’ll update here when we hear back.
This article has been updated with additional context about Automattic’s previous investment in competing WordPress hosting companies, including WP Engine..
