Major Acquisitions in the WordPress Market

This and past year have been challenging, but life goes on and the acquisitions in the tech industry are happening on a regular basis.

Today, we’re gonna talk about some major acquisitions in the WordPress market. I’ve been following different WordPress related brands for years and it’s been very interesting to observe their path over the time.

Lots of cool businesses have been acquired by bigger companies for various reasons. Some of them expanded (like WooCommerce), but some of them simply faded away (like WP Curve).

Let’s have a look at some of major acquisitions that happened in the last 5-6 years.

Latest acquisitions in the WordPress market

Year	Acquirer	Acquiree	Amount	In the news
2021	Liquid Web	GiveWP	N/A	GiveWP Joins Liquid Web
2021	group.ONE	WP Media	N/A	WP Media Is Joining group.ONE
2021	iThemes	Kadence WP	N/A	Kadence WP is Joining iThemes
2021	Automattic	Parse.ly	N/A	Automattic acquires analytics company Parse.ly
2021	Liquid Web	The Events Calendar	N/A	Liquid Web Acquires The Events Calendar
2020	Automattic	MailPoet	N/A	Automattic Acquires MailPoet
2020	GoDaddy	SkyVerge	N/A	We’re joining GoDaddy
2020	iThemes	Restrict Content Pro	N/A	Restrict Content Pro is joining iThemes
2019	Automattic	Tumblr	$3 Mln	Verizon is selling Tumblr to Automattic
2019	Automattic	Prospress	N/A	Automattic acquires Prospress
2019	Automattic	ZBS CRM	N/A	Automattic Acquires Zero BS CRM
2019	WP Engine	Flywheel	N/A	WP Engine acquires Flywheel
2019	Elementor	Layers WP	N/A	Elementor Acquires Layers WP
2018	Automattic	Atavist	N/A	Automattic acquires Atavist
2018	WP Engine	StudioPress	N/A	WP Engine Acquires StudioPress
2018	WP Engine	Array Themes	N/A	WP Engine Acquires Array Themes
2018	Liquid Web	iThemes	N/A	Liquid Web Acquires iThemes
2016	GoDaddy	WP Curve	N/A	GoDaddy buys WP Curve
2015	Automattic	WooCommerce	$30 Mln	Automattic Buys WooCommerce

As you can see, there are some active players in the market:

• GoDaddy – domain names and hosting provider. Don’t get hosting from them. Use a reliable service instead, like SiteGround.
• Automattic – the parent company of WordPress. Learn how to create your own WordPress site.
• Liquid Web – managed hosting solutions
• WP Engine – managed WordPress hosting
• iThemes – premium WordPress plugins. Their latest acquisition of Kadence WP aims to help them expand their WordPress theme division. Read my Kadence theme review here.

I’m not a big fan of tech related acquisitions, especially when they’re made to simply kill the competition. There are exceptions though, and it’s been fun to watch these companies.

So, what do you think? Have been all of these acquisitions successful? Do you like/use services or products of any of these companies?

Let me know in the comments below. I’m curious to see your opinions.