As the largest managed WordPress provider, Scottsdale-based GoDaddy Inc. is strengthening its offerings of the popular blogging platform with the acquisition of a Serbian WordPress site management tool company.
With its 17th acquisition, GoDaddy has bought ManageWP, a Belgrade-based company that enables web designers and developers to manage multiple WordPress sites from a single dashboard, said Jeff King, general manager and senior vice president of GoDaddy’s hosting division. Jeff King is GoDaddy’s senior vice president and general manager of hosting and security
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Jeff King is GoDaddy’s senior vice president and general manager of hosting and security.
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“ManageWP is a well-known brand in the WordPress state,” King told me today. “As part of GoDaddy’s strategy, this is bringing another great service to our small business customers. This will make our web developers’ lives very, very easy.”
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. It closed on Sept. 1.
With the acquisition, King said GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY) is the only provider of WordPress management and WordPress hosting solutions. All 30 ManageWP employees will be staying with the company. Founder Vladimir Prelovac is now the senior director of project management working out of GoDaddy’s Sunnyvale, California office. GoDaddy and ManageWP have a shared vision to empower the WordPress community and build great technology,” Prelovac said in a statement. “We’re both powered by the cloud, which will simplify product integration and accelerate next-generation product development. Combining both companies is a great win for web developers and designers around the world.
GoDaddy’s strategy is to acquire the teams and technology to accelerate its vision, King said. King said that since web developers build 50 percent of all small business websites, managing websites is a key component of GoDaddy’s business. This tool simplifies managing websites dramatically so that that designer can focus on the build and design,” he said. “It’s a huge time saver for a web developer and enables them to keep a healthy, ongoing relationship with their small business customer.
GoDaddy hosts 3 million WordPress sites and 10 million total websites, King said.
WordPress is an incredibly fast-growing, open-source platform, and (ManageWP) is entirely focused on WordPress,” he said. “We’re continuing to invest in WordPress solutions because we’re the largest host of WordPress in the world.
