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Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch

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Re: Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch

#11
post #6

I had been a customer - for a decade or more - of a company that WP Engine acquired. A couple of years after the acquisition I began to get persistent - VERY persistent - calls and emails from their ‘product specialists’ who were determined to get me a “better deal”. It turns out that their idea of a better deal was to move me onto a more expensive plan with lower limits than the plan I’d been on for 10+ years. They…

I was a customer of that same company that was acquired by WPengine. It had the highest ever performance benchmarks and customer approval until WPE got hold of it. I had also used WPE a couple of times earlier in its history. The service has always been bad. The business model has increasingly become squeezing the customer far beyond the point where any meaningful quality can be delivered. This year support has turned from aggressive upsells to aggressive blaming the customer for simply running the same software they've had in place for over a decade. WPE has a lot of shared hosting hidden behind its marketing cover. Classic old multitenancy problems. No one with any technical awareness and experience in WP hosting will say different. I ran into a former Flywheel tech at WCUS and heard their story of the dumpster fire that is WPE from the inside. Not surprised they fired a contributor from saying WPE as an employer discourages contributing to WordPress.

Re: Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch

#12
post #11
post #6

I had been a customer - for a decade or more - of a company that WP Engine acquired. A couple of years after the acquisition I began to get persistent - VERY persistent - calls and emails from their ‘product specialists’ who were determined to get me a “better deal”. It turns out that their idea of a better deal was to move me onto a more expensive plan with lower limits than the plan I’d been on for 10+ years. They…

I was a customer of that same company that was acquired by WPengine. It had the highest ever performance benchmarks and customer approval until WPE got hold of it. I had also used WPE a couple of times earlier in its history. The service has always been bad. The business model has increasingly become squeezing the customer far beyond the point where any meaningful quality can be delivered. This year support has turne…

I really loved Flywheel. Everyone I interacted with from sales to support was extraordinary. It must have been very sad for the folk working there to have the company gutted by WPE.

Re: Matt Mullenweg: WP Engine a 'cancer to WordPress' and urges community to switch

#13
I run a WP focused agency and can say that apart from the absolutely shitty sales tactics WPEngine are a solid choice for probably 90% of the sites out there.

The criticism outlined by Matt in this article is related to their lack of engagement with the open source community around WordPress and their unwillingness to significantly contributing to the project.

I seriously had no idea they only contributed a tiny amount (40 hours per week) and I know of other (larger) agencies like mine who do more than this so I hope WPE pull their finger out and implement a better strategy to give back.

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