Short answer: WordPress isn’t a company — it’s free, open-source software anyone can download and run on any host. WP Engine and Automattic are two separate companies that build businesses on top of that free software: WP Engine hosts WordPress sites, and Automattic — founded by one of WordPress’s co-founders — runs the paid service WordPress.com and holds the commercial licence to the WordPress name. They’re independent of each other, which is exactly what they ended up in court over. Here’s the map, in plain terms.
WordPress is software, not a company
This is the part that trips everyone up. “WordPress” is a piece of free, open-source software — a content management system you use to build and run a website. Per WordPress.org it’s “open source software” licensed under the GPL, built and maintained by a global community of volunteers, and it powers over 43% of all websites.
Because it’s open source, nobody sells you “WordPress.” You can download it for nothing and run it on almost any web host on earth. So when someone says “my site is on WordPress,” that tells you what software the site runs — not which company they pay. That one fact is the root of all the confusion below.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com — the first mix-up
Two websites, almost the same name, very different things:
| WordPress.org | WordPress.com | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The free open-source software + its community home | A paid hosted service |
| Who runs it | The WordPress project / community | Automattic (a private company) |
| Hosting | You find and pay your own | Included in the plan |
| Control | Full — any plugin, any code | Limited on lower tiers |
| Cost | Software is free (you pay a host) | Free tier + paid plans |
Same software underneath; the difference is who runs the server. WordPress.com’s own help pages put it plainly: WordPress.com is “a commercial enterprise owned by Automattic, a company started by one of the founding developers of WordPress.”
So who is Automattic?
Automattic is a private company founded in 2005 by Matt Mullenweg, who had co-founded the WordPress software two years earlier, in 2003. Mullenweg is still its CEO. Besides WordPress.com, Automattic runs WooCommerce, Jetpack, Akismet and Tumblr.
Here’s the subtle bit. The WordPress name and logo are owned by a separate non-profit, the WordPress Foundation. But in the Foundation’s own words, if you want to use the WordPress trademark commercially, “please contact Automattic, they have the exclusive license.” So Automattic is closely tied to WordPress — the same person leads both the company and the WordPress project, and Automattic controls commercial use of the name — but the software itself stays free and open to everyone.
Where WP Engine fits in
WP Engine is a different company entirely. It was founded in 2010 in Austin, Texas, by Jason Cohen, and it sells managed WordPress hosting — it calls itself “the #1 managed hosting platform for websites built with WordPress,” running more than 1.5 million sites. Since 2018 it has been majority-owned by the private-equity firm Silver Lake.
What WP Engine does is simple: it runs your website on the same free WordPress software, on its servers, and takes care of the hosting. What it is not is part of WordPress or owned by Automattic. It’s an independent business built on the free software — like dozens of other hosts, including us.
So why does everyone think WP Engine is WordPress?
Because the branding invites it — and the WordPress project itself says so. The Foundation’s trademark policy calls out this exact confusion:
“Please do not use ‘WP’ in any way that confuses people. For example, many people think WP Engine is ‘WordPress Engine’ and officially associated with WordPress, which it’s not.”
If you assumed WP Engine and WordPress were the same thing, you’re not alone — the organisation that owns the WordPress name wrote a whole paragraph about it. The same policy adds, pointedly, that WP Engine has “not donated to the WordPress Foundation, despite making billions of revenue on top of WordPress.” That grievance — the name, and contributing back — is what erupted into a public lawsuit in 2024. We covered what that fight means for your site separately.
The who’s-who, in one table
| Name | What it is | Who’s behind it |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress | Free open-source software (a CMS) | A global volunteer community; GPL-licensed |
| WordPress Foundation | Non-profit that owns the WordPress trademark | Independent foundation |
| WordPress.org | Home of the free software + community | The WordPress project |
| WordPress.com | Paid hosted service using that software | Automattic |
| Automattic | Private company; runs WordPress.com, holds the commercial trademark licence | Matt Mullenweg (WordPress co-founder), CEO |
| WP Engine | Independent managed-WordPress host | Jason Cohen (founder); Silver Lake (majority owner) |
Why this matters for your business
The useful takeaway isn’t the gossip — it’s the freedom hiding in it. Because WordPress is free, open software, “having a WordPress site” is really two separate choices: the software (WordPress), and the company that hosts it for you (WP Engine, Automattic’s WordPress.com, a local agency, us — anyone). You’re not buying into a single vendor; you’re using open software you can pick up and move between hosts whenever you like.
That’s the opposite of how closed site builders work, and it’s worth protecting: keep your domain in your own name, keep an export you can download, and you can switch the company without rebuilding the site.
The calm version
WordPress, Automattic and WP Engine aren’t one thing — they’re a piece of free software and two separate companies that build on it. Once you see that, the headlines make sense, and so does your own position: you own the site; you just choose who runs it.
That’s where we come in. We host WordPress sites — and Astro, Next.js, plain PHP or Node — on EU servers, billed by one EU company, with your domain in your name and no lock-in. If you want WordPress, you get the real, standard WordPress, hosted by people you can actually reach. See our managed hosting, or how we take over sites built by someone else.