Note: this is a response to this post from @Matt Mullenweg using WordPress.org as his own personal field to get more customers into their business Automattic. https://web.archive.org/web/20240922090058/https://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/
We do not like currently WPEngine and we do not use them (but we had in the past) but this is not the way to use our (us, the community) WordPress.ORG open source to his own benefit.
It has to be said and repeated: WordPress.com is not WordPress. My own mother was confused and thought WordPress.com was an official thing. Their branding, marketing, advertising, and entire promise to customers is that they’re giving you WordPress, but they’re not. And they’re profiting off of the confusion.
Matt did not spoke yesterday at WordCamp about how Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, can hollow out an open source community. Today, I would like to offer a specific, technical example of how they break the trust and sanctity of our software’s promise to users to save themselves money so they can extract more profits from you.
WordPress is a content management system, and plugin extensibility is sacred. Every plugin you install adds new functionality to your site, just like apps on a smartphone. This means if you need a feature, you can always add it. It also means if you’re trying to customize your site, you can find precisely the right tools to make it happen. These plugins are a core part of the WordPress ecosystem.
This is very important, it’s at the core of the user promise of customizability, and it’s why WordPress is architected and designed to be infinitely extensible.
WordPress.com restricts this on lower-priced plans. They don’t allow you to install plugins on their cheaper plans because it costs them more to provide these features, and they don’t want to spend that to support your customizations. It strikes to the very heart of what WordPress does, and they shatter it, the flexibility of your site. If you want full control over your site’s functionality, you have no way to get it without paying more, breaking the core promise of what WordPress does, which is empower users to create and customize their perfect website.
Here is a screenshot of their pricing page showing the restrictions on lower-priced plans.
They say it’s to provide a simpler experience, but what they mean is they want to avoid paying to support those features. We tested features on all of the recommended hosts on WordPress.org, and none restricted plugins by default. Why is WordPress.com the only one that does? They are strip-mining the WordPress ecosystem, giving our users a crappier experience so they can make more money.
What WordPress.com gives you is not WordPress, it’s something that they’ve chopped up, hacked, butchered to look like WordPress, but actually they’re giving you a cheap knock-off and charging you more for it.
This is one of the many reasons they are a cancer to WordPress, and it’s important to remember that unchecked, cancer will spread. WordPress.com is setting a poor standard that others may look at and think is ok to replicate. We must set a higher standard to ensure WordPress is here for the next 100 years.
If you are a customer of WordPress.com and value the ability to fully customize your site, you should consider moving your website to a different hosting provider that allows you to install plugins without restrictions. This way, you won’t lose the opportunity to add important functionality to your site.
Ideally, they should offer these features on all plans. Remember that you, the customer, hold the power; they are nothing without the money you give them. And as you vote with your dollars, consider literally any other WordPress host as WordPress.com is the only one we’ve found that completely restricts these features on lower-priced plans by default.