If you're behind on the WordPress vs WP Engine beef, here's what went down…
Matt Mullenweg, CEO / founder of Automattic, the makers of WordPress, called out WP Engine at the recent WordCamp US event for not contributing enough, in his opinion, to the WordPress open source project.
He went on to say that Silver Lake, the parent company of WP Engine, doesn't care about the WordPress ecosystem and only cares about making money. He encouraged WordPress users to switch hosts and get off WP Engine. Then he oddly praised Google and gave them a shout out right afterwards.
One Redditor who attended the speech wrote:
“Everyone left in a very weird mood. Matt started his talk pretty good and then it quickly turned to him name dropping WP Engine and their parent company. He showed the CEO on screen and suggested that people leave WP Engine. Honestly, whether they deserve it or not, it felt like the wrong time to do it. The whole place immediately picked sides.”
Matt later followed up with a blog post on WordPress-org (as opposed to his personal site) that criticized WP Engine even further:
“It has to be said and repeated: WP Engine is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WP Engine was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion.”
He actually went as far as saying that WP Engine “are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread.”
His main criticism in the blog post was that WP Engine disables post revision history by default:
“They disable revisions because it costs them more money to store the history of the changes in the database, and they don’t want to spend that to protect your content. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the integrity of your content.”
Many folks in the WordPress community criticized Matt on X for his speech and blog post:
“Your hosting also limits revisions to 25. So 3 is a cancer but 25 is supporting open source?”
“WordPress-com charges extra to access plugins that would be free. You can’t call one company out for taking advantage of the core open source project when your business is doing the exact same thing.”
“But, you have explicitly said dozens of times – if not hundreds. You are free to make hashtagWordPress do what you want, even if you do not like it.”
“Wow, I never got them confused. It has always been clear to me that they are one of many “WP” brands that grew up around the amazing open source project that is WordPress.”
“WordPress-com isn’t WordPress and is far more egregious in its misleading of customers about that fact.”
“This has absolutely no reason to be on .org. Put this hit piece on your personal site or your own company website that profits off of the confusion of WordPress-org vs -com.”
Others agreed with Matt:
“I can see where @photomatt is coming from. surprising to see a company generating half a billion from a project, yet contributing only a small amount back.”
“I'm with Matt on this. PE are mostly vultures who do not care about the product, only how much money they can suck out before they kill it.”
“I'm not judging him personally but I like the idea of calling out people profiting off open source without contributing. If everyone contributes a little it makes the world a better place.”
This isn't the first time Matt Mullenweg has called out a WordPress hosting company.
In June 2024, he identified GoDaddy as “an existential threat to WordPress' future” and urged GoDaddy employees to examine how many people are contributing to WordPress and WooCommerce, versus the company's investment in proprietary products.
WP Engine shot back at Matt's comments without naming him by publishing a blog post shortly after that highlights their contributions to the WordPress community:
MY THOUGHTS:
WP Engine has no obligation to contribute development hours to WordPress. It'd be great if they did — but it's not a requirement of using or profiting from the open source software.
I'd also agree that WP Engine gives back to the WordPress community in many other ways, outside of direct development hours, as their blog post mentions. Making it easier for more website owners and developers to use WordPress subsequently brings more people into the ecosystem, more users to WooCommerce, and more customers to Automattic's premium plugins (as one example of an indirect contribution).
I also find his comments about people thinking WP Engine was the “official” WordPress because of their marketing & advertising to lack merit. WP Engine using “WP” in their name is no different than the hundreds of other services doing the same — like WP SEO, WP Forms, WP Bakery, and on and on and on…
As the leader of an open source project, it's Matt's responsibility to incentivize companies and developers into contributing to the project — not publicly shame them into doing so.
I've been a user of WP Engine for many years. I think they offer a great service, reliable hosting environment, and top notch support.
The one thing I hate about WP Engine — which I've actively criticized them for as recently as two weeks ago — is their unscrupulous sales tactics. WP Engine's sales team have actually caused me to onboard less clients to their hosting, because I didn't want to subject those clients to WP Engine's unethical sales tactics.
Here's one example: WP Engine is already a “premium” host in terms of how much they charge for their entry level plan. Yet their sales people will message their customers (my clients) and use fear tactics to try and get them to upgrade to over-the-top expensive plans that they don't need at all.
One of their salespeople did it to me in 2020 and I gave her and her manager a piece of my mind. The manager apologized and offered me merch — which I didn't accept, because fuck off — and told him I'd be happier if they never pulled this crap again.
Narrator: But they did.
As recently as two weeks ago, Kyle Abel from WP Engine sales began his outreach to one of my clients saying, “Surprised to see the main .com being hosted on one of our shared environments.”
Then he went as far as CCing the ENTIRE team (everyone who was an Admin on the account) following up to try to get the meeting.
I wrote him back:
“Our websites collectively receive around 200 visits per day. The shared environment is fine. There's absolutely no need to upgrade to one of your premium plans.
If you don't think that WPEngine's shared environment is sufficient, I will gladly migrate [REDACTED]'s websites to a different host that offers a higher performance hosting environment for the same (or less) cost.
I've been through this before with WPEngine, and I'm not interested in having my client subjected to your sleazy sales tactics. Emailing a website owner who receives 200 visits a day spread across three websites that you're “surprised to see the main .com being hosted on one of our shared environments” is inappropriate. Emailing every admin on the account is unacceptable.
So please, just stop. There will be no meeting. There will be no upsells. Please take us off your upsell outreach list.”
WP Engine's sleazy sales tactics are actually why I stopped bringing a lot of clients over to them. However that doesn't take away from the fact that they offer a great hosting service and support.
And the fact that they are a for-profit business (with sleazy salespeople) doesn't require them to donate time or money to an open source project that they directly profit from.
Should they? Sure, definitely. It's in their best interest to support the WordPress project in any way they can — but there's no rule or required metric to do so.
So as much as I'd like to hate on WP Engine for their salespeople, I've got to side with them on this feud with Matt Mullenweg — although so far it feels like a one-sided feud because WP Engine isn't really fighting back (which they shouldn't) other than that one blog post highlighting their contributions.
That's my two cents. What's yours?
Join the convo on my LinkedIn post.