The deal will bolster GoDaddy’s portfolio of services geared toward web developers and designers. Small business domain host GoDaddy announced plans to acquire ManageWP, makers of a WordPress site management tool. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ManageWP offers services such as website monitoring, backups, automated migration, deployment, and publishing, but the main draw for GoDaddy was its centralized dashboard for managing WordPress sites.
“GoDaddy is serious about investing in WordPress, and ManageWP is by far the leading tool for managing WordPress sites,” Jeff King, SVP of hosting at GoDaddy, said in a press release. “Together, we’ll bring ManageWP to the scale of GoDaddy, helping web designers and developers save thousands of work hours and touch millions of websites globally, no matter where they are hosted.”
In a blog post, King said GoDaddy plans to keep the entire ManageWP team after the acquisition, as well as expand ManageWP’s office in Belgrade, Serbia.
For GoDaddy, the deal will bolster its portfolio of services geared toward web developers and designers. First unveiled in 2015 in the form of GoDaddy Pro, the suite of services aims to help web professionals manage client accounts, and it’s been key to helping GoDaddy redefine its standing as a technology provider for small businesses and developers.
More recently, the Arizona-based company launched a suite of Amazon-style cloud computing services that enables small businesses to build, test and scale cloud solutions on GoDaddy’s infrastructure.
In May, GoDaddy bought Encinitas, California-based FreedomVoice for $42 million so it could offer cloud-based telephony services to SMBs.
Like the developer tools, the cloud tools reflect GoDaddy’s long term strategy of becoming more of a technology and product provider.
By Natalie Gagliordi