A lot of people here seem to think that clients aren't aware of what's going on and therefore the impact will be minimal on developers. On a recent thread, the vast majority of commenters shrugged off the controversy as irrelevant to their day-to-day. And while that may be true for teeny tiny single-owner websites, some of us deal directly with large companies or white label through agencies, and let me tell you: their CMOs are well aware of what's happening.
Background: I'm a one-man outfit, who partners with a local visual designer to do the design work, or works white label to do the entire build for agencies.
- I had a contract signed and ready to go for 2025, where the budget for dev was $40k, and now they've backed out to reconsider the CMS as a whole, as a result of Mullenweg's petty war with WPE.
- I had another contract that just got signed with WPE (right before our Dictator for Life attacked WPE at WordCamp), the website for which I'm actively building right now. I'm also WPE affiliate. The client would have backed out of hosting if not for the extensive legal review they had to go through to set up the hosting in the first place, and they've only decided to stay on WPE for the short term. Potential impact on me is thousands of dollars in referral fees.
- I have had three other key clients (large % of total revenue) I manage whose sites I built reach out to me for reassurance since WordCamp to ask if the platform is stable going forward. All of them are CTOs or CMOs. All I could say is that with honesty is no one knows what the future holds. I can't even reassure them on the platform's stability. All because of one terroristic founder who's bent on destroying what shred of good faith is left in his creation. I won't blame them for switching platforms on the next design refresh because of this. But that's a loss of huge potential revenue for me as a single-owner freelancer.
So yes, we are suffering. I'm considering picking up at least 3 other popular CMS's as offerings over my winter break to contend with this. This is huge and I'm glad the mods opened discussion so we can track of this on a post-by-post basis. This should be front page until WordPress is a stable platform again!
Woof. I am really sorry this is happening to you and the community at large. Folks who suggest ignoring this charade because it doesn’t impact them do so at their own peril.
>I can’t even reassure them on *the platform’s stability*.
Yep.
That’s the biggest problem that everyone is facing right now.
That sucks. What clause did your client use to get out of the $40k contract?
I’m not a developer, I’m a business owner with two websites currently built in Joomla (yep, Joomla) that I planned to migrate to WordPress in the coming months. Now, I’m reevaluating that decision. I’m not really sure what to do, but I don’t want to spend money on an expensive migration only to find out that I need to move again in a short period of time. For now, the migrations are on hold and I’m taking a wait-and-see attitude.
Much of the ADO is because of the people NOT INVOLVED in it but wanting to pitch in. They are creating the noise your clients are watching.
As for th eplatform stability, what signs are there that it’s going to crash? none.
Even if WP Engine wins its case.. all it meams after is that its ging to become a free for all.
The only thing that could actualy HURT the platform is if Matt decided to pull out his contributions, including ceasing to fund free support and free services to the community.
I am sorry tho that your clients got wind of this and decided to pull out. That sucks 🙁
I’m facing a similar challenge with a pending 36k contract renewal. The client has already signed up with Webflow, and now I’m in a position where I either have to offer Webflow services or walk away. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than losing the opportunity altogether. By the way, what CMS platforms are you currently considering?
I’m very curious as to why this is being downvoted. Feels like Matt’s monkeys are out in force.
Invoice Matt for lost revenue.
Finally someone showing the real life impact all because some rich soyboy can’t stop himself from being unhinged.
My expectations right now are as follows: either Matt is forced to step down and the WordPress Foundation democratizes itself, or there will be a serious forking effort backed by a consortium of major players in the ecosystem. Perhaps, a combination of the two options.
Anyway, I am returning to Drupal after many years.
This is my concern as well. I have what could potentially turn into a huge eCommerce project, with several dozen websites including ongoing maintenance, and this instability has me worried.
I’m really sorry this happened to you. That’s awful.
So let me ask you this, what other CMS provides the level of breath and depth that WordPress provides. Let me tell you something, especially if it is a much bigger project that has such a heavy budget, I am sure that you would have had to leverage many plugins.
Any other CMS. To have the functionality you have offered through WordPress for a large project, you will be spending 10 times more to develop that functionality versus leveraging WordPress plugins.
I once gave an example of a multi million dollar project I was able to implement in WordPress for Pennie’s on the dollars against one of the big boys in consulting, but I got crucified by some people here saying that I was showboating and I was lying.
I wasn’t lying, It was a Data Driven project and I was able to leverage certain WordPress plugins that were so powerful.
As a matter of fact, I build the product without being paid, I took a risk and built it knowing very well that I might not see a penny, but I built it very fast and showed it to them.
The other team was still in the analysis and design phase because they wanted to built it out themselves.
So tell whoever owns that project, that to build any project in WordPress that requires a lot of functionality no matter what other stack they use they will be paying many folds over.
you shouldn’t use WordPress
I don’t build sites, but consult for mid-sized brands and typically web projects related to things are $50k+ and most often WP.
It’s very difficult for me to justify that right now and makes me uncomfortable going the WP route in the future from this. There’s a lot of other great technology, and I can justify budget for something different that won’t have these potentially very expensive future headaches for brands.
This is wild for me to watch from the sidelines.
Sorry to hear that
Why not use a dedicated server? Or another top quality hosts? Give better performance, and it will help you avoid these dramas in future. Genuinely I’m curious to how and why any business should be lost just due to one hosting provider , sorry to hear that.
I’m eyeballing Shopify over here.
And those who got banned from the .org site just lost their livelihoods as well, if they were dependent in any way on selling plugins and themes.
My fear is that you pitch a client on your WordPress site package, they seem keen on it, but then do their own research and see negative news at the top of the search results and get cold feet.
Thanks for this post.