WooCommerce Gets Bought Out

WooCommerce, an eCommerce tools company that helps WordPress users turn their site into an online shop, has been bought out by WordPress’ parent company Automattic — making WooCommerce officially a part of the Web software company’s family.

The announcement came via a blog post from WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, who shared the news that WooCommerce would be joining Automattic to help more people sell goods online, easier. The announcement, made Tuesday (May 19), indicated that this plan has been in the works for years.

“For years, we’ve been working on democratizing publishing, and today more people have independent sites built on open source software than ever before in the history of the Web. Now, we want to make it easy for anyone to sell online independently, without being locked into closed, centralized services — to enable freedom of livelihood along with freedom of expression,” Mullenweg wrote.

He explained that a few years ago, he was asked when WordPress was going to make an online store as easy to make as a blog — and the idea started coming together. While buying WooCommerce seemed like a logical step for WordPress, the decision to do so has also taken some time. But with its global presence across 16 countries, the tool should be a welcome addition to the company. It’s estimated that WooCommerce powers 650,000 storefronts.

“In the past few years, WooCommerce really distinguished itself in its field. Just like WordPress as a whole, it developed a robust community around its software, and its products meet the needs of hundreds of thousands of people around the world,” Mullenweg said. “Just like us, the vast majority of WooCommerce’s work is also open source and 100 percent GPL. And just like WordPress, you’ll find WooCommerce meetups popping up everywhere, from Los Angeles to London, and its global and community-focused work together to make the users’ experiences the best they can be.”