Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, launched a harsh attack on a competitor this week, calling WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.”
Since 2010, the company has been making money off of the open source WordPress project. Mullenweg criticised them for taking advantage of the project without giving much back and for turning off important features that make WordPress such a powerful platform in the first place.
WordPress powers more than 40% of the web. Anyone or any business can use the open source project to run their own website, but many companies have sprung up to make money off of it by offering hosting services and technical support. Some of these are Automattic, which Mullenweg started in 2005 to make money off of the project he had started two years before, and WP Engine, a managed WordPress hosting provider that has raised almost $300 million in funding over its 14-year history, with Silver Lake investing $250 million in 2018.
That being said, Automattic has a history of supporting WordPress hosting companies. In fact, they invested in WP Engine back in 2011, and Mullenweg spoke at WP Engine’s conference just last year. In 2016, Automattic also got a majority stake in the WordPress hosting company Pressable. Later, it also put money into Gridpane.
But this week at WordCamp US 2024, a gathering in Portland, Oregon that is all about WordPress, Mullenweg was very blunt in his criticism of WP Engine. Mullenweg went on stage and read from a blog post he had just published on his personal blog. In it, he talks about the different “five for the future” investment promises made by Automattic and WP Engine to support the continued growth of WordPress. Automattic has promised to contribute 3,900 hours per week, while WP Engine has only promised to contribute 40 hours.
Even though he admitted that these numbers are only a “proxy” and could be off, Mullenweg said that the difference in contributions is interesting because Automattic and WP Engine “are about the same size, with revenue in the ballpark of half a billion dollars.”
At least one other well-known web host has been criticised by Mullenweg in the past. He said that GoDaddy was taking advantage of the open source project without contributing anything useful. He said that GoDaddy was a “parasitic company” and a “existential threat to WordPress’ future.”
Mullenweg’s new attack wasn’t just directed at WP Engine; he also said bad things about the company’s main investor.
Mullenweg said, “The company [WP Engine] is run by Silver Lake, a private equity firm that manages assets worth $102 billion.” “Silver Lake doesn’t care about your open source plans; it only wants to make money.” At this point, I want everyone in the WordPress community to go vote with their money. Who do you want to give your money to: someone who will care for the environment or someone who will dig up all of its value and leave it to die?
Later, someone in the audience asked Mullenweg to clarify if he was telling WordPress users to stop using WP Engine. He replied that he hoped all WP Engine customers would watch his presentation and should think about what they should do when their contracts are up for renewal.
She said, “There are other hosts like Hostinger, Bluehost Cloud, Pressable, etc. that are really hungry for that business.” “If you switch to someone else, you might get faster performance, and it’s never been easier to migrate.” Part of the idea behind data freedom is to do that. It takes about a day of work to move your site to a different platform, and if you’re still a WP Engine customer, I really think you should think about that when your contract is up for renewal.
“A Cancer To WordPress”
Because of all the fuss that happened after the talk, Mullenweg wrote a second blog post in which he calls WP Engine a “cancer” for WordPress. “Remember that cancer will spread if nothing is done,” he wrote. “WP Engine is making a bad example that other people might see and think it’s okay to follow.”
Mullenweg said that WP Engine is making money off of people not knowing the difference between the WordPress project and the business services company WP Engine.
Mullenweg wrote, “It needs to be said again and again: WP Engine is not WordPress.” “Even my mum got lost and thought WP Engine was a real thing.” They promise users that they will give you WordPress in all of their marketing, advertising, and branding, but they don’t. They are making money off of the misunderstanding.
Also, Mullenweg said that WP Engine is selling a bad product because the core WordPress project saves all changes so that users can go back to an earlier version of their content. WP Engine, on the other hand, does not do this, as its help page says.
Customers can ask for revisions to be made, but help only covers three revisions. After 60 days, these are deleted automatically. If a customer needs to handle many changes, WP Engine suggests that they use a “third-party editing system.” Mullenweg says that this is because they want to save money.
That’s because it costs them more to keep track of all the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that much to protect your information, says Mullenweg. It goes against everything WordPress stands for, and they break it. The integrity of your information is at stake. What WordPress is supposed to do, which is handle and protect your content, is manage it. If you make a mistake, you can’t get your content back.
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WP Engine has been asked to react by Parhlo World. We will let you know when we hear back.
This story has been updated to include more information about Automattic’s past investments in competing WordPress hosting companies, such as WP Engine.
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