Dispute over the Commerciality of WordPress – Impact on Sites Hosted at Seravo

For the past month, there have been significant changes in the WordPress.org project that have confused the entire WordPress community. A dispute has developed between Matt Mullenweg, the original developer of WordPress, and WP Engine, one of the largest WordPress hosting companies. The repercussions have not only affected the WordPress contributors, but also regular WordPress sites and their users.

Although the dispute has no direct impact on the functionality or security of the sites hosted at Seravo, in this article we discuss the dispute’s background to and its consequences. For example, Seravo has had to make changes to the update method of the popular ACF plugin – updates to the plugin will now be retrieved from WP Engine, outside WordPress.org.

Seravo keeps following the situation and we’ll be in contact with our customers, should there be any other changes or necessary action to be taken. If you have a WordPress site and are concerned about its availability or hosting due to the dispute, feel free to contact Seravo’s WordPress experts any time.

WordPress is Open Source

Developers Mike Little and Matt Mullenweg released WordPress in 2003, based on the b2/cafelog blogging tool developed by Frenchman Michel Valdrigh. Today, WordPress is the world’s most popular website publishing and content management system and is developed by following the principles of open source. In 2005, Mullenweg founded Automattic, which in turn started offering commercial hosting for WordPress blogs.

During the 2010s numerous other services were developed around WordPress, and businesses took an interest in its ever-growing popularity. Today, we have an entire WordPress ecosystem, where open source software functions as a platform for commercial activities, such as the development of plugins, and where businesses contribute to funding and support the development of WordPress in turn.

The Dispute and the Demand for More Support

The dispute between Mullenweg and WP Engine came to light in September during the closing speech of WordCamp US 2024, which WP Engine was also sponsoring. In this speech, Mullenweg criticised WP Engine as a company for not supporting the WordPress.org project enough, despite WP Engine’s annual $400M revenue.

Mullenweg believes that WP Engine threatens the WordPress trademark, and is already such a giant player in the industry with over 30% market share that WP Engine could be mistaken for the “official” WordPress hosting service. Mullenweg also pointed out that Automattic contributes more resources to WordPress.org than many other companies that benefit commercially from it. Sponsoring events alone is not enough, and contribution to the WordPress project and core is also needed.

Seravo is actively exploring and developing ways in which to participate in the WordPress community, with the focus of spending time on a weekly basis in WordPress development. Recently, Seravo has been working on WordPress training materials, documentation and Finnish translations, for example.

Dispute Timeline

Mullenweg also regretted that revisions of individual WordPress posts and pages is limited to three at WP Engine, and cannot be increased without contacting support. In Mullenweg’s view, revisions are a core feature of WordPress, and limiting it will fundamentally affect the way WordPress’ reliability is perceived.

By default, Seravo limits the number of revisions to 30 due to performance optimization. However, the amount of revisions can be freely modified by our customers by editing the following line in wp-config.php:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', 30);

All Seravo’s WordPress hosting plans also include automatic daily backups, and each individual backup can be restored for 30 days.

WordPress.org Updates Blocked for WP Engine

At the end of September, WordPress.org announced that it will not provide any updates for WordPress sites hosted on WP Engine, resulting in the entire company and its operations being excluded from the services provided by WordPress.org. As updates to plugins are an essential part of the operation and security of WordPress sites, this action would cause inconvenience and concern to the customers of WP Engine.

Advanced Custom Fields

In June 2022, WP Engine acquired the Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin for WordPress, which is popular among developers and used on numerous WordPress sites worldwide. Users may choose between a free and a paid version (ACF Pro) of the plugin.

Under Mullenweg’s leadership, WordPress.org made its own version of the free version of ACF in October 2024 as the dispute progressed. The new version (fork) was named Secure Custom Fields (SCF). What made the situation unusual was that the ACF code in the WordPress.org repository was replaced by SCF code. This meant that many WordPress sites ended up using SCF without their users’ consent.

The ACF plugin is also open source and licensed under GPLv2. This means that anyone has the right to use and modify its code, and creating a new version of the plugin is not prohibited per se. On the other hand, blocking updates and replacing the ACF code in plugin repository are actions that have attracted a lot of criticism and concern from many towards plugin security in the WordPress ecosystem. In other words, a very popular plugin was completely replaced in a way that went unnoticed if regular WordPress users did not follow the progression of the dispute – or if they were not even aware of it in the first place.

Are WordPress Sites at Seravo Affected?

At Seravo, we focus on providing the best possible WordPress hosting for our customers’ and partners’ sites. Seravo will continue to have access to WordPress.org and updates, and the dispute does not require any separate action from Seravo’s customers.

A fix has been implemented on sites in Seravo’s hosting that are using ACF to ensure that these sites continue to use the version of ACF provided by WP Engine. This means that any updates to the ACF Pro plugin will be retrieved from outside the WordPress.org service. Automatic, tested updates provided by Seravo will continue to function in a normal manner.

Seravo’s customers are only required to take action if they wish to use the SCF provided by WordPress.org. The use of this version is permitted on our service (we do not restrict the functionality of any plugin by default), but a separate decision to use the SCF must be made by the site owner and/or developer.

Due to the dispute, Seravo is also preparing for possible future similar situations in its internal operations. This is to ensure that our customers’ websites remain operational in a secure manner. As our customer, if you have any questions about the operation of your site or the dispute, you can contact our customer service, free of charge.

Global Effect on WordPress Sites

Could the effects of the dispute extend to other WordPress hosting providers? As the dispute relates to the use of the WordPress trademark, it is highly unlikely that other hosting providers will experience the same repercussions. Apart from the changes to the ACF/SCF plugin described earlier, the dispute will have no impact on the operation of WordPress sites hosted at Seravo.

At Seravo, updates continue to work automatically and as tested on our customers’ sites. In addition, we always install critical security updates as quickly as possible. As the dispute continues, there is no evidence that the performance of other WordPress hosting companies would be limited in a similar manner. Seravo’s customers can therefore continue to host their sites on our service.

The Future of WordPress

WordPress has become the world’s most popular content management system for websites. In recent years, it has evolved in a direction where it has much to offer as a platform for increasingly diverse and demanding web projects. The current situation impacts the reputation of WordPress and, above all, the passionate community of people involved in its development.

Thanks to the principles of open source, WordPress’ strength has always been its popularity, community and versatility. It’s hard for closed source software to compete with the variety of additional features that WordPress has to offer. The experience of using and building a website is richer in an environment with an abundance of options and features to choose from.

How to Choose the Best Hosting WordPress?

As with any other software, there are and always have been risks associated with using and maintaining WordPress, and it’s good to be aware of them. This is why it’s a good idea to host your site in a quality environment where software and plugin updates are actively managed.

When choosing a hosting provider, consider the following: is it price that matters the most, or something else? Does the hosting service provider charge extra for automatic backups or customer service? What are the possible costs of a data breach on your site, and what about its carbon footprint?

Premium WordPress Hosting

WordPress hosting services are united by their simplicity and additional features: you can host websites without having to build or maintain everything from scratch. To ensure the best possible customer experience and site performance, we have designed and extended the core features of WordPress. In addition, our service includes everything you need to get your site up and running.

While traditional web hosting providers stick to standard technological solutions, Seravo uses software that is proven to perform well with WordPress. This is how we’ve managed to create a WordPress hosting service that is proved to be among the fastest in the world.

Seravo’s hosting is fast and secure, and our servers use 100% renewable energy. Plus, when you need help or support, you can reach a real person quickly when needed. Our 24/7 monitoring also keeps your site up and running, so you can sit back, relax and save money by not having to host your site yourself.