WordPress vs. WP Engine: What’s going on and what can you do about it?
Let’s take a look at why this drama is unfolding, who’s been impacted by it so far, and what we as WordPress users can do as this battle likely plays out over the next couple of years. If you’re looking for alternatives to WP Engine hosting or the WordPress content management system, keep reading.
Matt Mullenweg, answering questions about the situation at TechCrunch Disrupt
The drama between WP Engine and Matt Mullenweg explained
It seems like something new pops up in this heated saga every week between Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, and WP Engine, the managed hosting company. Rather than go down that rabbit hole, I’m going to provide you with a high-level summary of what ignited this feud and the key events that have taken place so far.
2011: Automattic invests in WordPress
Over 10 years ago, Matt Mullenweg’s Automattic was one of many companies that invested money into the then year-old WordPress hosting platform.
2018: Silver Lake jumps onboard
WP Engine received a $250 million investment from private equity firm Silver Lake. According to a recent Mullenweg interview with TechCrunch, Automattic lost their shares and stake in WP Engine around the same time.
February 2023 to September 2024: Matt Mullenweg and Heather Brunner have words
Mullenweg believed that WP Engine’s use of the WordPress and WooCommerce trademark had created confusion in the market. He was also displeased with some of the modifications the company had made to the intellectual property, which he believed compromised the user experience.
Mullenweg and Heather Brunner, the WP Engine CEO, began discussions around February 2023. Their focus was the WordPress trademark and hashing out a commercial agreement that would allow WP Engine to use related trademarked terms in its sales and marketing.
This is where the relationship began to break down between the two parties.
September 20th 2024: Term sheet
To try and formalize this discussed agreement, Automattic sent a term sheet to WP Engine.
WP Engine was asked to agree to the following in exchange for a license to continue using the WordPress trademark:
- Use the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks and branding in adherence with Automattic’s guidelines.
- Pay Automattic a royalty of 8% of its gross revenue every month, the equivalent of 8% in WP Engine employee hours spent working on the WordPress.org core, or a combination of the two.
- Stop forking the software made by Automattic, WooCommerce, and other affiliates.
- Participate in WordPress community events in addition to WordCamps (not just pay for sponsorships).
The agreement would terminate in seven years.
September 23rd 2024: Cease-and-desist issued
The terms sheet was not accepted. As a result, Automattic sent a cease-and-desist letter to WP Engine. It outlined the ways in which the hosting provider continued to use the WordPress and WooCommerce trademarks in unauthorized manners.
October 1st 2024: WP Engine banned from WordPress.org
WP Engine was banned from accessing the free resources of WordPress.org. This meant that the hosting provider no longer had the ability to issue updates or manage its plugins.
WP Engine deployed a workaround to ensure that customers’ service would not be disrupted.
October 2nd 2024: WP Engine fights back
WP Engine filed a lawsuit against Automattic. In the complaint, the company alleged a number of grievances against Automattic, like:
- Misusing the WordPress trademarks for financial gain
- Extorting WP Engine for millions of dollars
- Blocking the company and its users from WordPress.org and its servers
- Encouraging users to do business elsewhere
- Libel and slander
All in all, WP Engine has alleged that Automattic intentionally interfered with its ability to do business and compromised its relationships with customers. The company is asking for injunctive relief, which would prevent Automattic from carrying on with this course of action. In addition, they seek compensatory, exemplary, and punitive damages.
October 3rd 2024: Alignment offer for Automattic employees
Automattic offered employees a chance to resign from the company. The “Alignment Offer” would give employees $30,000 or six months’ salary (whichever was higher) if they resigned. They would also give up their rights to be re-hired.
Of the 1,900 or so employees they had at the time, 159 people (8.4% of the company) accepted the Alignment Offer.
October 12th 2024: ACF plugin caught in crossfire
WordPress took over the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin in the repository and renamed it “Secure Custom Fields”.
This was done by invoking Point 18 of the WordPress.org Plugin Guidelines. The reason for which was this:
“… to make changes to a plugin, without developer consent, in the interest of public safety.”
Although WP Engine no longer had access to manage the free plugin in the repository, users were invited to download the free plugin from WP Engine’s own servers.
October 17th 2024: Alignment offer ii
Automattic employees were given another Alignment Offer. The new offer would give employees nine months of pay.
Mullenweg said this was due to reports of someone leaking private communications to the press. The leaker accepted the offer and left the company immediately.
October 30, 2024: Mullenweg interviewed by TechCrunch
Mullenweg is interviewed during TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. At one point, he’s asked his feelings on a forking of WordPress.
“There might be a fork. I mean, we’ve had WordPress forks before — probably about three or four times in the history [of WordPress].”
Overall, he seemed supportive of the idea if people were eager for a new leadership or governance model.
October 31, 2024: Automattic responds
Automattic submitteda legal response to WP Engine’s suit. It contained three documents:
- Motion to dismiss the complaint
- Motion to strike certain elements (i.e. Mullenweg’s personal opinions)
- Opposition to the preliminary injunction
In addition, Automattic made the following public statement:
“After engaging in conduct that undermines the WordPress community, WP Engine and its private equity owner, Silver Lake, have resorted to making unfounded allegations against the founder and vanguard of the open source software.
WordPress open source software remains freely available to all. But WP Engine is not entitled, either legally or morally, to have unfettered access to WordPress.org—a website Matt Mullenweg built for the benefit of a robust community.
Preserving and maintaining the resources made available on WordPress.org requires considerable effort, investment, and a shared sense of mission that the plaintiff does not embrace. WP Engine and Silver Lake should not expect to profit off the back of others without carrying some of the weight, and that is all that Matt is asking.”
December 10, 2024: Preliminary injunction
WP Engine won a preliminary injunction. This means their access to WordPress.org must be restored.
December 19, 2024: Mad King of WordPress
Inc. published an article with Mullenweg entitled: “Is Matt Mullenweg the Mad King of WordPress?”.
Mullenweg called it a hit piece, referring to the selection of morose photos and the spinning of harmless anecdotes he shared with them. He also called out the numerous factual errors and biases included in the post.
December 20, 2024: Holidays
Mullenweg announced thatWordPress volunteers would go on break for the holidays. This resulted in a pause of new:
- Account registrations
- Plugin submissions
- Theme submissions
- Photo submissions
- Plugin reviews
He mentioned that none of this applies to WP Engine as the lawsuit forces him to provide the company with free labor and services. (He took some other parting shots at WP Engine before closing the post.)
December 24, 2024: A bit of trolling
Mullenweg went into ther/WPDrama community on Reddit and asked the following:
“What drama should I create in 2025?
I’m very open to suggestions. Should we stop naming releases after jazz musicians and name them after Drake lyrics? Eliminate all dashboard notices? Take over any plugins into core? Change from blue to purple?
I think we can brainstorm together and come up with way better things than I could on my own. ☺️ Also, Merry Christmas! 🎄”
The post received 619 comments, with most people expressing sadness and frustration over the fact that Mullenweg continues stoking the flames. The common sentiment seems to be one of wanting Mullenweg to be quiet while the lawsuit goes on or to step away from WordPress altogether.
January 2025: Deleted Tweet
Matt Mullenweg posted the following on X.com:
“After 21 years of blood, sweat, and tears working on open source while also trying to build a business that did the same, it’s so refreshing to follow the example of inspiring business leaders like @heatherjbrunner and focus fully on maximizing shareholder value.”
Heather Brunner is the CEO of WP Engine with whom Mullenweg initially began negotiations with in 2023. The tweet was quickly taken down.
January 11, 2025: High profile account deactivation
Mullenwegdeactivated the WordPress.org accounts of the following users:
This appeared to be in response to public declarations made by each individual to recall WordPress leadership (i.e. Mullenweg), align with WP Engine, and/or to fork the software.
Joost de Valk, the founder of Yoast SEO,published a post on December 20 calling for new leadership.Karim Marucchi of Crowd Favorite did the same thing. Both offered up the same vision of new leadership and have made arguments as to why they should take the reins.
(It’s not so clear why the other three were targeted, as perBurns’s X post.)
Woke up to a phone full of pings that @photomatt has…publicly announced he’s deactivated an account I haven’t logged into since February 2020, for an OSS project I haven’t been involved with since then, and am not involved with now.Must have been a bad batch from his dealer. pic.twitter.com/wBnkwgL9Ej
— Heather Burns (@WebDevLaw) January 11, 2025
Mullenweg said he supports this forking initiative and that is why he deactivated their accounts, so that they may “Now go do the work”.
January 15, 2025: Reduced contributions
Automattic announced that the company willreduce its sponsored contributions to WordPress.org to match the 45 hours a week that companies like WP Engine devote to the project. Due to the time and money spent defending themselves against WP Engine, they’re shifting their efforts towards for-profit projects and properties (e.g. WordPress.com, Pressable, WooCommerce, etc.).
The notice also cited personal attacks on Automattic employees and repeated calls for Mullenweg to step away from WordPress.
January 24, 2025: Bringing out the big guns
Although Automattic and Mullenweg lost the fight against the injunction, they havebeefed up their legal representation. Rosemarie T. Ring, who previously represented George W. Bush, has been brought on to represent Automattic in its response to a Motion to Intervene.
Who’s been affected by the WP Engine and WordPress fight?
It’s more than just WP Engine and WordPress who have been impacted by this heated battle.
WP Engine
To start, WP Engine is trying to expedite the legal proceedings due to the company already experiencing massive losses.
In the filing, they reported a 14% increase in their cancellation rate between September 26 and 30 compared to the prior September average.
Self-service signups decreased by 29%.
At the same time, their new business sales channel also reported losing 63 prospective purchases or upgrades specifically due to the legal embroilments. This division also secured 333 fewer contracts than expected, based on earlier projections.
WP Engine has also been monitoring their existing customers’ setups. There’s been a 375% increase in customers who have installed migration tools. While not all of them have begun the contract termination process, this is a strong signal that there’s a mass migration underway.
Automattic’sWP Engine Tracker now keeps tabs on the websites fleeing WP Engine for other hosting services.
In addition to revealing which websites have migrated, the tracker also notes which web hosting companies they’re most commonly going to. They include:
- Pressable
- Bluehost
- Kinsta
- Digital Ocean
- SiteGround
- Hostinger
- GoDaddy
On September 21, 2024, WP Engine hosted 745.2K websites. As of January 28, 2025, they’re hosting 675.6K.
WordPress
In October, WordPress lost just under 10% of its staff due to the Alignment Offer. In Mullenweg’s interview with TechCrunch, he stated that it was much-needed as the company had been overstaffed for some time. Regardless, they’re working on refilling some of those roles now.
It’s not just staff that WordPress has lost because of this legal drama. Some developers have pulled their plugins from the wordpress.org repository after what happened with ACF. Paid Memberships Pro is the most notable of the bunch and CEO Jason Coleman explained why they left WordPress.org here.
While plugin developers might be wary of Mullenweg and WordPress.org right now, we’re not seeing a mass exodus to flee the repository. One reason could be because WordPress.org continues to be the best option for developers.
Aggressive_Ad_5454 had this to say on Reddit in a discussion about developers removing plugins from the repository:
“From my perspective as a self-funded dev of non-monetized plugins, my loyalty is to my users.
I’m not yet ready to exit the w.org repository because I’m not sure my users would be better served that way (and I don’t have a krewe of ops folks to make it happen reliably). But I have to say I’m glad others are forcing the issue. This mess needs to be sorted out, or my users will suffer.
It would be healthy for the community around WordPress if MM would explain his vision for the future. It seems likely to me that part of that vision is to slow down the ensh**tification (Cory Doctorow’s word) of the community by extractive private equity players. I am 100% on board with that goal.
But let us have a chance to see MM’s vision!”
It will be a long time before plugin developers (and theme developers, by extension) can trust Mullenweg and WordPress.org again. The same likely goes for web hosting companies that are likely pouring over every inch of their websites and marketing campaigns to ensure they’re not in risky territory when it comes to the WordPress trademark.
WordPress developers, designers, and other web pros
It’s not just the two main players that are suffering financially or reputationally. It’s many web professionals who make a living from WordPress.
To start, you have all the web developers and designers who’ve recommended WP Engine and/or WordPress to their clients. With all this disruption going on, clients now wonder if they can trust these professionals they’ve hired.
According to mccoypauley on Reddit, they’ve lost about $40,000 because of this situation. Other Redditers commented on similar losses. Euphoric_Role437 said:
“I’m facing a similar challenge with a pending 36k contract renewal. The client has already signed up with Webflow, and now I’m in a position where I either have to offer Webflow services or walk away. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than losing the opportunity altogether. By the way, what CMS platforms are you currently considering?”
Even if these web pros can maintain the trust of their clients throughout all of this, there’s still the cost to navigate the mess caused by Mullenweg and WP Engine.
It’s not like every client will pay developers or designers to migrate their websites from WP Engine hosting to an alternative provider. Or to rebuild their sites on another content management system. Sadly, because of the way many of the more popular CMS are set up, it’s impossible to do a straightforward migration out of WordPress into their platforms. So a complete rebuild is necessary.
This will likely have web designers and developers wondering if WordPress or WP Engine are worth using in the future.
What alternatives do WordPress users have?
According to Mullenweg, this legal battle between WP Engine and Automattic/WordPress could take until 2026 and 2027 to play out. So, if you’re feeling uneasy about using either of these providers, you might want to start considering alternative options.
WP Engine web hosting alternatives
If you’re looking to switch hosting providers withinWordPress, here are some WP Engine alternatives:
All of these companies are offering either discounts or free migrations, according to a recent post on the WordPress blog.
I suspect these money-saving deals will remain for some time as deciding to migrate one’s site (especially sizeable enterprise and ecommerce sites) is not an easy decision to make or process to undergo. So business owners will need time to decide and get buy-in from all decision-makers.
WordPress CMS alternatives
Graphic from WordPress, illustrating its route to 40%
Although WordPress currently hosts about 40% of the world’s websites (the biggest CMS market share-wise), there are alternative platforms that are worth looking at. For example:
Drupal
Drupal is a good option if you’re a web developer looking for an open source alternative. Although its theme and plugin repositories pale in comparison to WordPress, it’s highly customizable if you have advanced coding knowledge.
Ghost
Ghost is a good option if you’re seeking a solid blogging and newsletter-building platform. You can also use it to sell paid subscriptions. John O’Nolan, the founder and CEO of Ghost.org, recently published a reflection on his departure from WordPress and what his objectives are with Ghost. If you’re worried about something similar happening on this open source CMS, read this.
Webflow
Webflowis a good option if you want to create advanced websites and dynamic design. It’s a bit more complex to use than WordPress, but if you’ve used other visual editing tools like Figma or Photoshop, you’ll have no problem getting the hang of it. Plus, you won’t have to layer page builder plugins on top of the CMS to unlock all the design capabilities you need.
Shopify
Shopify is a good option if you need a WooCommerce alternative. It already has the largest market share of ecommerce sites, so it’s the best choice if you want to leave the WordPress ecosystem entirely. It’s also incredibly easy to get the hang of and makes it very easy to manage every aspect of your store.
HubSpot CMS
HubSpot CMS is a good option if marketing, sales, and customer service are a top priority for your brand. Although you can manage these activities outside of your CMS, it’s much more convenient to have them built in. HubSpot brings each of these hubs into a single CMS, so you can streamline your sales and marketing activities and improve your outcomes from one place.
Learn why HubSpot is a good alternative to WordPress here:
Conclusion
It could take a couple years before we see how the legal drama between WordPress and WP Engine unfolds. The best thing you can do for yourself is to figure out what’s best for you and your clients going forward. There are plenty of alternatives out there. It’s a matter of deciding if you need to make a transition and, if so, what the smartest path forward is.
Further reading
- Matt Mullenweg talks about Automattic’s staffing issues and financials at TechCrunch Disrupt
- WP Engine is not WordPress by MM
- Ensuring Stability and Security: Recent Timeline by WP Engine
- ‘I can’t run a business like this’: Why the WordPress row matters on BBC
- WPEngine, Matt, Automattic & WordPress.org megathread on Reddit
