WordPress vs WP Engine: The “Why” and Paths Forward
Whether you’re in the tech industry as an developer, entrepreneur or marketer, you’ve no doubt learned about the ongoing legal feud between WordPress and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenwig and WP Engine, a leading WordPress website hosting platform. Since last month, the two companies have been duking it out via social and blog posts and filed lawsuits, while the WordPress community has been caught in the crossfire; particularly when Matt Mullenwig announced that WP Engine would effectively be banned from WordPress’ resources, including plugins and themes.
All of this has happened so quickly and so unexpectedly, and still the feud wages on. This has not only frustrated many WordPress and WP Engine customers and compelled them to find other alternatives, but it’s even invigorated WordPress competitors to put themselves out there as the answer to their problems. If you’re wondering how all of this started and how this may affect you, we’ve got you covered below.
Matt Mullenwig is the CEO of Automattic, an open-source software company that owns WordPress, WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and other products.
How It All Started
Back in September, Matt Mullenwig wrote a scathing blog post called “WP is Not WordPress,” which chastised the hosting company for not allowing users to see revision histories for their posts, and not contributing enough to the WordPress community at large. He believes that this functionality is essential to fulfilling the promise to protect users’ data, and that WP Engine turns this off for cost-saving reasons. Additionally, he said that the company’s use of “WP” in their name confuses people to believe that WP Engine is part of WordPress—all of which led him to call them a “cancer to WordPress.”
This started a public back-and-forth between the companies, with WP Engine responding with a cease-and-desist for Mullenwig to withdraw his comments. It stated that their use of “WP” in the name is covered under fair use, and that Mullenwig would require them to pay up a huge percentage of their revenues for usage of the WordPress trademark. In response, Automattic sent their own cease-and-desist saying that WP Engine breached their WordPress and WooCommerce trademark rules.
Ultimately, this led to Mullenwig banning WP Engine from WordPress’ resources, compromising thousands of websites hosted by WP Engine. This happened because even though WordPress is open-source, companies like WP Engine need to run a service to obtain those resources. WP Engine has since deployed its own methods for updating plug-ins and themes, and updated their subscription tiers to no longer use “WordPress” in the names.
The ongoing feud between the companies has led to massive confusion and frustration within the WordPress and development communities at large, with ongoing criticism being levied upon Mullenwig and even a massive exodus of Automattic employees which made up 80% of its WordPress division.
What This Means For You
For any business with a WordPress website, you know that all the magic happens within the dashboard. This also includes turning on new plugins and updating block themes. However, if your website is hosted by WP Engine, you won’t be able to do these things through the WordPress dashboard anymore, which can leave you vulnerable to security issues and unable to deploy new features.
As a design studio that also specializes in WordPress websites, we absolutely empathize with the fact that it’s frustrating for entrepreneurs and small companies who are busy enough with their day-to-day tasks and obligations, that they now have to worry about their website being vulnerable to malware and other issues. Not resolving this can be the difference between a couple front-end hiccups to a completely broken and compromised website—all of which can cost you time, mental bandwidth, and (lots) of money.
If you’re finding yourself in this position, there are a couple actions you can take now:
Back up your website routinely so it can be restored in case something happens.
Check out other hosting platforms such as Siteground and Bluehost, both of which we’ve used in the past.
Protecting your website with back-ups or hosting migrations can help mitigate any potential disasters.
If you decide to leave WordPress, there are a ton of self-hosted website platforms that can help bring your company’s website to greener pastures!
Leave WordPress?
Naturally, there is always the option of leaving WordPress and migrating to another website CMS platform altogether. This is definitely the larger-scale option since you would have to familiarize yourself with a brand-new set of tools, and may even require more development help.
There are many low-code and no-code platforms out there in the market now, and it can be hard to choose. However, depending on the size of your business and the current functionality of your website, we highly recommend the following:
Squarespace: Perfect for any small e-commerce business with smaller product inventories, service-based businesses or tech/SaaS companies looking to drive site traffic and conversions. Not only does the Fluid Engine site editor allow you to create amazingly beautiful websites, but plugins such as SquareKicker and SEOSpace can allow you to build and command a WordPress-rivaling website for your business. Squarespace websites are self-hosted and has everything you need to sell and market your business in one platform.
Webflow: Perfect for any company that has a dedicated design team which can build and maintain the site as needed. While this would naturally require some code knowledge, Webflow’s value prop is its immersive and easy-to-use visual code editor, which allows people to build websites and UI visually. With Webflow, you can build just about anything, and it’s all self-hosted!
Shopify: Shopify’s specialized platform has driven millions of e-commerce businesses’ growth, with built-in marketing and SEO tools, as well as a wide developer and vendor network. If you’re currently on WooCommerce right now and are looking to potentially leave, Shopify is the best option.
Where Things Go From Here…
Needless to say, this all sucks. Whether the reasons are legitimate or not, the fact of the matter is that this feud has compromised businesses across the globe, and this needs to stop. We’ve been reaching out to our previous clients who are on WP Engine to see how they’re holding up, and we’re ready to lend a hand if necessary. In the meantime, all we and the WordPress community can do is stay tuned and keep updated.
If your company or one in your network is having issues due to this, we’d love to help out in any way we can!
