WP Engine International Growth Led by Agency Focus

AUSTIN, Texas — March 1, 2021 — WP Engine, the world’s most trusted WordPress technology company, saw impressive growth in its International Business Unit in 2020, which now numbers more than 30,000 international customers, led by a growing list of referring agency customers who account for more than half of the revenue across EMEA and Australia.

WP Engine’s international operations added an office in Krakow, Poland to its growing list of international offices that includes London; Limerick, Ireland and Brisbane, Australia. The company also grew its employee base across those offices while earning multiple accolades as a great place to work.  

International customers leveraging WP Engine’s Managed WordPress Hosting and Digital Experience Platform include leading brands such as BBC Children in Need, Fujifilm-X, The Manila Bulletin and Thomson Reuters; and agencies such as Big Bite, Cohaesus, Earnest, First Move, Granite, The Monkeys, Overdose Digital and Yah Marketing.

“Our international growth builds upon and complements the growth we had in the U.S. in 2020, helping customers grow with WordPress as websites have become the new front door for business,” said Fabio Torlini, Senior Vice President and Managing Director, International for WP Engine.

“They’ve helped make us the #1 managed WordPress platform with more of the largest 200,000 sites in the world hosted by WP Engine than anyone else in WordPress. Going forward, we will continue to invest in and collaborate with our many talented agency customers, helping them accelerate their digital business with WordPress powered by WP Engine.”

Helping Power the Freedom to Create With WordPress

As the leader in Managed WordPress Hosting and WordPress technology, WP Engine is the driving force behind 1.2 million digital experiences for over 150,000 customers across 150 countries. In fact, WP Engine is not just the most popular platform for WordPress, it hosts more WordPress sites among the top 10 million than anyone else and is the fastest platform on desktop and mobile for WordPress.

WordPress grew 14% in 2020, from 35% to 40% of all websites. This growth, part of a global trend of businesses going online during COVID-19, has led to downstream growth of brands and agencies turning to WordPress as a much more cost-effective yet robust solution. 

Agency Partner Program Growth

WP Engine experienced a 51% growth in agency partners in EMEA and 53% growth in Australia. Launched in 2017, WP Engine’s Agency Partner Program (APP) enables agencies of all sizes to use WordPress to grow their business by driving creative, engaging experiences that deliver clear impact for their clients.

Since its launch, the APP has grown exponentially, enrolling more than 5,000 agency partners thanks to the availability of extensive thought leadership and content resources, its digital experience platform, advanced developer tools and the opportunity for new business leads. For more information about the Agency Partner Program and to apply, click here.

Global Customer Success on WordPress

From rapidly responding to the needs of thousands of independent retailers affected by COVID-19 to building out a fresh new content hub for mobile users to replacing a highly developer-reliant, proprietary CMS with one that allows for much great agility, WP Engine’s international customers overcame huge obstacles to serve their stakeholders in 2020 via WordPress. 

In the U.K., digital agency 93digital conducted a complete UX and navigation overhaul, plus integrations with APIs, legacy platforms and marketing automation software, for their customer Mitie, resulting in a lean, easy-to-use WordPress site that is optimized for the user’s experience. This enabled Mitie to respond quickly to rapid changes during the pandemic and use its website to empower internal stakeholders while generating a steady stream of inbound leads. 

Australian customer XWP worked with Nova Entertainment, one of Australia’s most well-known media brands, to build a new content platform optimized for mobile users and migrate over legacy content without missing a beat, resulting in the successful launch of a mobile-friendly, performant site. 

Soccer Mindset Academy needed to scale its site to meet the growing demand for powerful mindset and peak soccer performance training, with both a WordPress website and a mobile application. The company worked with WP Engine to build a headless app connected to its website, allowing mobile users full access to the curriculum they wanted. 

Metcash, Australia’s leading wholesale distributor, leveraged WP Engine and a headless WordPress configuration to ensure the most vulnerable members of society would have access to food and other essentials during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Sarah McCormick, Agency Lead at Big Bite – “We have been working in partnership with WP Engine for a number of years on various enterprise projects including Gumtree, Amnesty International and Octopus Group. The scalable solutions that WP Engine offers have provided us with a strong foundation to build robust WordPress solutions that meet our client’s requirements, and ultimately transform the way that brands meet the demanding needs of digital-first content creation, from writing and editing to publishing news around the globe.”

Warren Howard, Head of Application Support and Maintenance at Cohaesus – “We were already working with the wider WP Engine group through our partnership with Flywheel. However, just like all WordPress websites are not equal, all WordPress hosting is not equal and WP Engine, for us, provides comprehensive enterprise WordPress hosting options for those clients with larger, more complex and more demanding WordPress sites. We’ll be using both platforms in the future, placing each client according to their site requirements.”

David Gyertson, Head of Digital at Earnest – “WP Engine helps us to deliver exceptional digital experiences at speed without needing to worry about the infrastructure, and the team is always there to support us and our development team.”

Rob Carpenter, Co-Founder at Granite – “This new partnership with WP Engine is yet another exciting step in Granite’s three year strategy to double our revenues to €12m by 2024. As organisations digitally transform, I am delighted that Granite is now in an even stronger position to support our clients as they scale their WordPress solutions into the cloud. WP Engine’s support systems and infrastructure are first-class, which aligns perfectly with the demands of our clients.”

Expanding to New Markets

Started in 2010 by serial entrepreneur Jason Cohen, WP Engine has grown exponentially since then, opening its first international office in London in 2015 and then expanding with a customer support and engineering office in Limerick, Ireland in 2016, a sales office in Brisbane in 2017 and the Krakow office in 2020. As part of the growth of WordPress around the world, WP Engine will continue to examine areas for expansion around the world.

Be You. Be Here.

WP Engine is also growing its team around the world and hiring will continue in 2021. All of WP Engine’s international offices are hiring with available roles in sales, software engineering, DevOps, product management, finance and operations. For more information and to apply, please visit https://wpengine.careers/. WP Engine was also recently recognized as a Great Place to Work in the UK, in addition to 10 international workplace awards over the last three years. 

For more information about WP Engine, its products or services, go to www.wpengine.com

About WP Engine

WP Engine, the world’s most trusted WordPress technology company, powers the freedom to create on WordPress. We provide the most relied upon and trusted brands and developer-centric WordPress products for companies and agencies of all sizes, including Flywheel, Local and Genesis. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, WP Engine has offices in Brisbane, Australia; Kraków, Poland; Limerick, Ireland; London, England; Omaha, Nebraska and San Antonio, Texas. Read more at www.wpengine.com

Contacts

WP Engine

Eric Jones

[email protected]