Today, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg announced that the company has acquired WooCommerce, the most popular ecommerce platform in the WordPress ecosystem. The plugin had recently passed 7 million downloads and powered 30% of online stores.
This is the largest acquisition in Automattic’s history. It brings 55 WooCommerce team members from 16 countries into Automattic, bringing the company’s total headcount to 379 at the time. Mullenweg confirmed that the deal includes WooCommerce, Sensei, and all related plugins and themes.
Because WooCommerce is so widely used, Automattic will not rebrand these products. The WooCommerce brand will remain in place and continue to grow, and WooThemes and WooCommerce will continue to sell products on their own independent sites.
WordPress became popular in large part because it is simple and easy to use. Under Automattic’s leadership, WooCommerce will likely become even easier to use, which should attract more people to WordPress as both a content management system and an ecommerce platform.
