It is all over the news. GoDaddy acquired ManageWP, the popular website management service. ManageWP has joined the decent list of GoDaddy acquisitions. It seems it is going well for GoDaddy. Unless you were living under the rock, you heard at least about GoDaddy. It is very popular domain registrar and web hosting company.
According to Wikipedia: “As of January 2016, GoDaddy was said to have more than 61 million domain names under management.” ManageWP is long time expert in providing services to manage multiple WordPress sites.
It allows you to add any number of websites to manage them from a single dashboard. It also comes with many features and options which make life easier.
It was launched by well-known WordPress developer Vladimir Prelovac, who also developed some of the popular plugins like SEO smart links, SEO friendly images and much more.
ManageWP was founded in 2011 and has more than a quarter million web sites managed by their service. With headquarters in Serbia, they have about 30 people in the team.
Applause for my Serbian neighbors for their success from not so much successful neighbor in Croatia. But my time will come. The force is strong with me.
The rumors are ManageWP will remain a standalone app, and GoDaddy will integrate several features into their GoDaddy Pro and WordPress hosting plans.
What Does This Mean For You?
Well if you are not GoDaddy nor ManageWP user, absolutely nothing. But if you have some connection with one or both, then you can expect some changes.
GoDaddy will surely benefit from the features ManageWP provides. It will be interesting to see how will they integrate it with their GoDaddy Pro program and WordPress hosting plans.
The ManageWP SaaS as it currently exists will be a standalone offering, but GoDaddy will also integrate it into their Pro platform.
They expect to start rolling out ManageWP features within the GoDaddy Pro dashboard in the next couple of months. This news caused some stir in WordPress community. It seems many ManageWP users are not happy with this decision.
GoDaddy hosting has a bad reputation, and I personally would never host my sites there. But that doesn’t need to mean that this acquisition will not go in favor for both parties and their customer base. Time will show.
UPDATE: Vladimir Prelovac has published post about their merging with GoDaddy.
GoDaddy acquired ManageWP Wrapping It Up
ManageWP recently released their Orion version which brought many changes. Some of them are faster performance, asynchronous actions, clone wizard, optimized scheduled backup process, client report, etc.
This redesign came with new pricing scheme which can be cheaper or expensive depending on how many sites you manage from their service. This acquisition will offer big exposure for ManageWP thanks to huge GoDaddy user base.
It is not strange GoDaddy made this move. WordPress dominates in CMS world. Most new GoDaddy hosting customers install WordPress. So investing in WordPress related product is a smart choice.
Already many ManageWP users started expressing their dissatisfaction with this decision. Some say they have built their company on ManageWP and on moving clients away from bad hosts like GoDaddy. If you are looking for ManageWP alternative, then I suggest you to check my WP Umbrella review.
“An awesome company being acquired by a horrible company. I will be leaving ManageWP for sure.”
“Fire the guy that made this dumb decision. This is really bad news.”
I think GoDaddy made a brave move here. But who will benefit in this “marriage” and will ManageWP lose some of its customers is yet to be seen. I now pronounce you husband and wife. Newlyweds, I wish you luck.
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