Automattic’s New Site Tracks Websites Leaving WP Engine Following Disputes with Matt Mullenweg
Amidst the feud between WP Engine and co-creator Matt Mullenweg, Automattic has confirmed launching a tracking website to track the sites that left WP Engine.
WP Engine Tracker
The name of the website is WP Engine Tracker which tracks how many websites have left WP Engine since September 21, 2024. The site has been developed by an Automattic employee which features Automattic logo and a link to an associated GitHub repository. So far 16,000 websites have migrated to other hosting providers. The site primarily includes a searchable database of websites hosted on WP Engine, that viewers can also download as a CSV spreadsheet.
“The beauty of open source software is that everyone is able to access data on a granular level, because it’s all publicly available information. That public data has shown that ever since WP Engine filed its lawsuit- making it clear that they do not have an official association with WordPress and attracting greater attention to the company’s poor service, modifications to the WordPress core software, increasing and convoluted pricing structure, and repeated down times- their customers have left their platform for other hosting providers,” a spokesperson at Automattic stated.
Dispute Between WordPress and WP Engine
Following the latest WordPress.org and WP-Engine news, the feud between the two is the most controversial ongoing battle among the WordPress community which started in mid-September over a blog post published by Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic and co-founder of WordPress, in which he called WP Engine “a cancer to WordPress” and criticized the host for disabling users to track their revision history for every post. He claims WP Engine does this to save money. Mullenweg also said to WP Engine investor Silver Lake that they are not sufficiently contributing into the open-source project, and the usage of “WP” brand is confusing for users.
WP Engine’s Reply
WP Engine replied by sending a cease-and-desist letter, which reads, “Automattic’s CEO Matthew Mullenweg threatened that if WP Engine did not agree to pay Automattic — his for-profit entity — a very large sum of money before his September 20th keynote address at the WordCamp US Convention, he was going to embark on a self-described ‘scorched earth nuclear approach’ toward WP Engine within the WordPress community and beyond.”
Purpose of the tracking site
Well, the purpose of the WP Engine Tracker website is still very unclear other than just tracking the websites that have already left WP Engine and shifted to another hosting providers. It is indistinct as to what is the main point of creating this site and what the site visitors are expected to do with this data.
In the coming weeks, WP Engine will lose over 8% of its business. In September, Mullenweg asked WP Engine to pay 8% of its revenue as a licensing fee for the WordPress trademark. Meanwhile, the official WordPress account on X is actively promoting offers and blogs that are giving alternatives to the WP engine.
