Automattic Bans WP Engine from WordPress Services

In a move that drew a few exclamations of “Finally!” from some of us, the CEO of Automattic, creators of WordPress, announced that WP Engine servers would no longer have free access to the consolidated directories, update servers and other services, given their recent attack on WordPress. Read the original article here: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine-banned/

For those of us who have been working with and trying to support the limited, constrained sites hosted on WP Engine, this is very welcome news.

Where the WordPress project created a democratic revolution in which anyone could put together a website themselves at very nearly no cost, WP Engine put that experience in a box, took out a number of things, and charges very high monthly fees in the name of providing fast reaction time.

They do this by hacking off bits of code, prohibiting or limiting the plugins and features you can use, and otherwise setting fences around what you can and can’t do with your WordPress website.

The CEO of Automattic publicly called out WP Engine recently, and it did not go well. See the original article here: https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

In his article he mentioned that the WordPress served by WP Engine is not WordPress anymore, because their modifications interfere with some basic operations and run counter to the principles of content protection that WordPress was built on, and went on to give a specific, recent example of these kinds of alterations.

WP Engine first tried to pull the information which was visible to Administrators on WordPress back-end pages, but bungled the attempt.

WP Engine then resorted to the threat of litigation, leading to yesterday’s announcement that WP Engine would be banned from using WordPress services.

This is a big deal because every site on WP Engine is now on the clock to being hacked. It’s only a matter of time. Without updates, sites don’t get security fixes, improvements, and new functions. So this is an enormous penalty.

That’s what happened. But the question is:

Why did Automattic punish WP Engine?

First a bit of background.

Automattic is the company responsible for most of the work done on WordPress. Overwhelmingly so. However, thousands of software developers contribute to the code of the open-source WordPress content management system.

WordPress.com is the hosting platform owned by Automattic, on which clients can purchase hosting and create their own site. It is Automattic’s biggest source of income, along with domain registration, anti-spam plugins, and security services, including custom development.

WordPress.org is the home of the Open Source WordPress project. You can download the platform yourself, put it on any computer with a web server and PHP, and off you go with your own website for free.

WP Engine is an unconnected company that offers similar web hosting services as WordPress.com Their hosting plans are much more expensive, and hosting is their only source of income along with management and security. They’ve repeatedly and intentionally blurred the lines with marketing that sounds like “We are WordPress’s engine.”, to the point where the WordPress creator’s own mother thought he somehow must own WP Engine. It’s not illegal, but certainly borderline.

The problem with WP Engine 

In order to maximize their profits and reduce risk to users on their platform, both WP Engine and WordPress.com limit what users can do with their WordPress-based websites. Certain plugins are banned, certain services are limited, and some capabilities are removed. All this so that your site will play nice with all the other sites residing on the same system.

WP Engine decided to focus on performance and fast servers, but that means they have to remove even more functionality to speed up the remaining code, prohibiting even more plugins, themes, and services, including some cache management plugins, since they offer their own.

And here is where we start getting into some gray areas. At what point does it become OK to prevent a user from using a competitor’s plugin for free, instead of paying for your service? For example, backup plugins have difficulty working on WP Engine. But, of course, WP Engine’s backup feature works just fine. Cache plugins which can make websites faster find that WP Engine interferes with their operation.

While this has been a source of great frustration at times for our team, the same could be said for GoDaddy hosting, and even WordPress.com.

Automattic’s complaint against WP Engine

With all the limitations imposed on WP Engine and WordPress.com websites, I felt I had good reason to dislike WP Engine. However, the biggest complaint against WP Engine is none of these things I’ve mentioned so far, it’s simply that they aren’t pulling their weight. Well, that, and trying to silence criticism of their failure to abide by their pledge.

As a company making most of their money using the product provided for free by Automattic, under the Open Source WordPress project, WP Engine pledged to contribute to the Open Source WordPress Project some 5% of their profit to be invested in the future of the platform. A platform that, let’s not forget, they count on for their very livelihood.

Where Automattic puts some 3900 hours per week into continuing the development of WordPress, WP Engine, whose profits are roughly equal to Automattic, contributes only 40 hours per week, despite having pledged to contribute 5%  as part of the “Five for the Future” contribution program. It’s not money, you see, it’s time; time, and code improvement.

So Automattic’s beef with WP Engine starts with WP Engine not pulling its weight. When Automattic was critical about WP Engine a few days ago in its WordPress news, WP Engine rushed to rip out the news module from WordPress so that their users wouldn’t see it, and in the rushed process brought down thousands of client websites. Many of those website owners contacted the open Source WordPress project, incorrectly assuming it was a problem with their code. A few of those websites are still not up as of this writing.

After those events, WP Engin served Automattic with a Cease and Desist through their lawyers. Since they couldn’t avoid clients seeing the criticism, they threatened Automattic to prevent them from repeating it. But the complaint is simple: WP Engine has been mooching off of WordPress for a while now, contributing almost nothing. So maybe it is time for WP Engine to spend some of those profits recreating the free services they are getting from Automattic, and thousands of volunteers, and get to work independently, since their version of WordPress, is very different at this point anyway.

Or, if you still believe in that sort of thing, stand by your pledge.

I, for one, will be following this story with great interest.

And if you need help with migration or backing up your WordPress website, I can help.

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The views and opinions expressed by the author are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Datasign Marketing.