The commercial arm of WordPress, known as WordPress.com, recently announced its entry into the website building business. Initially, this announcement was not well received by the WordPress web development community. However, as more information became available, many softened their stance and began seeing potential opportunities.
WordPress Business
WordPress is commonly associated with the development of the open-source content management system (CMS) known as WordPress. However, there is more to WordPress than its open-source community. There is also a for-profit arm that offers website hosting, domain name registration, and other related services through WordPress.com.
The WordPress.com business is part of a larger network of WordPress-related businesses under the Automattic umbrella. Sister sites run by Automattic include WooCommerce, Gravatar, Jetpack, and Akismet, among others. Automattic’s slogan is:
"We don’t make software for free, we make it for freedom.”
Built By WordPress.com
The WordPress ecosystem has flourished mainly due to web developers and programmers who contribute to building and testing the open-source WordPress CMS. In return, they have access to excellent software for offering web design services, plugins, and themes.
However, the WordPress brand is now being used to offer web development services directly, which is a significant step beyond offering plugins or hosting. The new service is known as Built By WordPress.com.
According to the official web page:
"Whether you need a fast and performant eCommerce store for your products and/or services, a polished website for your professional services firm, or an educational website for your online courses, our experts can build it for you on WordPress.com…"
Website Building Plans
Built By WordPress.com offers three types of website building plans, each catering to different types of sites:
- Online Stores
- Educational Sites
- Professional Services
These plans cover eCommerce, online courses, educational sites, and professional services websites. The professional services category may include local brick-and-mortar businesses like yoga studios or moving companies.
An "engagement manager" is assigned to each website-building project to serve as the point person. The cost of these websites starts at $4,900, but the service is offered at a limited capacity during its launch.
According to the site:
"Custom websites starting at $4,900, but space is currently limited as we launch this new service."
Web Development Community Responds
A significant issue raised within the community is the perception that web developers helped build WordPress. For WordPress to now compete against them using the very platform they helped create feels like a betrayal.
One person tweeted:
"See Automattic’s business model has changed. Feel for the developers this will affect. While WordPress built wordpress.com platform and manage the project, it is the unpaid dev community that made it and gave it the rep they market and capitalize on."
Another individual compared Automattic and WordPress to Amazon’s strategy of creating competing products under their own brand.
According to another tweet:
"This is the open-source version of Amazon copying popular products and turning them into ‘Amazon Basics’ to take profits away from vendors. It’s unnecessary, predatory, and unfair business practice."
Another issue is the confusion between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Automattic’s use of the WordPress brand potentially misleads consumers into thinking that WordPress.com is the same as the WordPress.org open-source project.
A tweet elaborates:
"Absolutely ridiculous that they do this IMO. If they wanted to it shouldn’t be on WordPress.com. No one else can use ‘WordPress’ in a domain."
Another tweet explains:
"There are two things at play here:
- The trademark and naming confusion making it hard for non-insiders to understand .com is not the Open Source project.
- Unfair business advantage thanks to sole exclusive use of said trademark when competing with bazaar vendors."
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, stated that this product is meant to compete with companies like Squarespace, providing an option within the WordPress ecosystem for entry-level online business creation instead of turning to Wix or Squarespace.
In a tweet, Matt Mullenweg stated:
"I would be extremely surprised if this impacts anyone’s consulting business, if you do have a current or potential client leave for it please let me know."
Some community members see potential opportunities, such as WordPress.com opening the program to white label work by trusted agencies. Matt indicated he is open to this idea if the initial launch proves successful.
One tweet inquires:
"How does an agency get involved so they can receive referrals from this service? What’s the agency’s cut of the $4,900? Who handles the customer during development and after? What’s included in the package?"
Matt Mullenweg replied:
"It’s unclear if anyone wants this yet, so for this experiment don’t have that yet. If it works then definitely will try to open it up."
Not all reactions were negative. Some community members believe that this move does not represent direct competition with the WordPress development community but aims to retain users within the WordPress ecosystem instead of losing them to services like Wix.
Citations
- Blog Announcement: Let Our Experts Build Your Dream Website
- Official Built By WordPress.com Page: Built By WordPress.com
