WordPress.com

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
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 nameWordPress.com
Product URLhttps://wordpress.com/
Parent organisationAutomattic
Workflow categoryPublishing & distribution
Date product founded2005
Product descriptionWidely 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

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