How the WordPress & WP Engine Feud Affects Your WordPress Website
October 15, 2024
Automattic, the company that owns WordPress is currently feuding with WP Engine and this will likely impact your WordPress website.
WP Engine is a WordPress hosting provider that you’ve probably already heard about and likely have even thought was owned by Automattic or WordPress.
Automattic is claiming that WP Engine profits from their free software and is infringing on their trademarks. After failed settlement attempts, Automattic has outlined their intent to block all WP Engine customers from having the ability to update their WordPress website or WordPress plugins.
WP Engine recently acquired Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), a WordPress plugin which is used by millions of websites, including every WordPress website built by Simplistics Web Design. ACF has a paid ‘pro’ version from which WP Engine profits on. Automattic has taken over the free version of the ACF plugin without WP Engine’s permission, renaming it to Secure Custom Fields (SCF). If you want to retain updates from the original ACF developers, you will now have to pay for the pro version, or download the free version directly from WP Engine.
At Simplistics, we believe that it’s important to give back to the WordPress community while profiting from the software. We have released countless free plugins and have provided code to fix and advance other plugins, like Shortpixel. Automattic is frustrated that WP Engine has not given back to the WordPress community and profits more off WordPress than they do.
It is our recommendation that you move your website off of WP Engine so you can still receive updates and ensure your website’s security. We can offer our clients two options of support;
1. Migrate your site to another hosting provider
Simplistics can help migrate your website to any hosting provider of your choice. Here is a list of hosting providers we recommend.
2. Migrate to Simplistics
Simplistics can offer to move your site to our server. Some benefits of hosting with Simplistics includes:
- Servers located in Canada
- Secure server with firewalls
- Daily, weekly and monthly content and database back-ups
- Unlimited storage and bandwidth
- WordPress security updates
- Ability to create your own back-ups
- On-going support
If you are interested in either option above, please email your account manager or reach out to us today.