WordPress.com
Summary
Widely used content management system that powers a wide variety of sites across the Web.
Parent organisation: Automattic
Type of organisation: Privately-owned company (or group)
Market share: Market dominance
Pricing: $4/user/month-$45/user/month
Factors driving pricing: Additional features, Ability to whitelabel or customise
Skills needed to set-up: Needs tool/domain expert to configure
Skills needed to use: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Requires audience sign-in to use: No, sign-in is optional
Parent organisation: Automattic
Type of organisation: Privately-owned company (or group)
Market share: Market dominance
Pricing: $4/user/month-$45/user/month
Factors driving pricing: Additional features, Ability to whitelabel or customise
Skills needed to set-up: Needs tool/domain expert to configure
Skills needed to use: Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it)
Requires audience sign-in to use: No, sign-in is optional
Pros
Open Source alternatives available
Releases new features regularly
Shares product roadmap
Plain English TOS
Clear data policies
Allows data export
Allows data deletion
Has accessibility statement
Cons
Newsworthy technical issues - WordPress.com VIP platform outage reverts sites back to default themes
Newsworthy security breaches - WordPress says iOS app bug exposed account tokens to third parties
Does not share diversity data
Full Product Data Collection
Data collected January-February 2020
| Product name | WordPress.com |
| Product URL | https://wordpress.com/ |
| Parent organisation | Automattic |
| Workflow category | Publishing & distribution |
| Date product founded | 2005 |
| Product description | Widely used content management system that powers a wide variety of sites across the Web. |
| What type of company or organisation is the product owned by? | Privately-owned company (or group) |
| Is the company profit-making? | Cannot determine |
| How is this product funded? | Subscriptions, VC investment |
| What market share does the tool have? | Market dominance |
| Is there an Open Source alternative in this product space? | Yes, WordPress.org, Drupal, Joomla, Ghost |
| When did the company last release new features? | November 2019: Publishers can accept recurring payments from their audience |
| Have they shared details of the product roadmap? | Yes: exact features unclear, but WordPress.org (on which the commercial product is built) has releases tentatively planned in March 2020, August 2020, December 2020, March 2021, June 2021, September 2021, and Decemeber 2021. |
| Is there talk of the product raising further investment? | No |
| Is there talk of the product being acquired? | No |
| Have there been any newsworthy business issues or challenges in the last 12 months? | No |
| Is there a pricing model listed on the website? | Yes |
| How clear & transparent is this pricing model? | Partly: some pricing listed; must speak to salesperson to confirm |
| What is the range of prices offered? | Personal – $4/user/month Premium – $8/user/month Business – $25/user/month eCommerce – $45/user/month |
| What factors drive higher pricing? | Additional features, Ability to whitelabel or customise |
| What skills are needed to get this tool set up & usable? | Needs tool/domain expert to configure |
| What skills are needed to USE this tool day-to-day? | Plug & play (any non-technical user can do it) |
| Does this tool use proprietary file formats for saving documents & outputs? | Defaults to common open standard file formats |
| Is the product reliant on 3rd-party APIs or interoperability to function? | No |
| Have there been any newsworthy technical issues in the last 3 years? | WordPress.com VIP platform outage reverts sites back to default themes |
| How clear is the Terms of Service for users (i.e. publishing customers)? | Simplified, plain English TOS |
| Does the product have a data collection & usage policy on its website? (Can be a GDPR statement)? | Yes, comprehensive. |
| Is their data policy “GDPR everywhere”? | No different rules in different markets |
| Does the product require your audience to sign-in to use it? | No, sign-in is optional |
| IF SIGN IN REQUIRED: Does audience sign-in use 3rd party platforms? | No 3rd party auth, just a user account |
| Does the public product website mention how to export or transfer your data to another service? | Yes: Export/transfer publisher content, Yes: Export publisher metadata |
| Does the public product website mention how to delete your data? | Yes: for both publisher and audience data |
| Have there been any newsworthy security breaches with this product in the last 3 years? | Yes. WordPress says iOS app bug exposed account tokens to third parties |
| Does the company have an accessibility statement on its website? | Yes |
| Does the company release information on the diversity of the workforce? | No |