WordPress is one of the best examples of how businesses can thrive in an open source ecosystem. There are many multi-million dollar businesses earning all their revenue from WordPress related products and services. In this article, we will highlight some of the most influential WordPress businesses and companies today. Hopefully this will inspire others to start their own WordPress businesses.
1. Automattic
Founded by WordPress co-founder, Matt Mullenweg, Automattic is the company behind the popular blog hosting service WordPress.com (See the difference between WordPress.com vs self hosted WordPress.org sites). Automattic is also behind several other WordPress related products and services like Akismet, WooCommerce, Polldaddy, Gravatar, and VaultPress.
Automattic heavily contributes to open source WordPress.org, bbPress, and BuddyPress projects. In terms of influence, revenue, and the overall user base, Automattic is the industry leader among WordPress businesses and companies.
2. Envato
Envato runs the popular marketplace website ThemeForest and CodeCanyon. These are probably the second most popular destination for WordPress themes and plugins. Despite the license controversies in the past, Envato is one of the most influential WordPress businesses today.
3. Awesome Motive
Awesome Motive is the parent company of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. Founded by Syed Balkhi, the company sells several WordPress related products like Soliloquy, Envira Gallery, ThemeLab, and the best-selling lead generation software OptinMonster.
Awesome Motive also runs several popular web properties including List25 and WPBeginner.
4. Copyblogger
Copyblogger is the parent company of StudioPress, a popular premium theme company behind the Genesis Theme framework.
Aside from StudioPress, Copyblogger also offers WordPress hosting through WebSynthesis and a completely custom platform, Rainmaker, that allows you to create membership sites.
Copyblogger has a huge user base of bloggers, developers, and site owners.
5. WPEngine
WPEngine is one of the most popular managed WordPress hosting provider. Loved by developers, site owners, and venture capital firms, WPEngine is among the fastest growing companies in WordPress.
6. Pagely
Pagely is the first managed WordPress hosting platform. Their robust server architecture is powered by Amazon Cloud. This allows you to have the same best-in-class performance, redundancy, and scalability that is available to the biggest brands in the world without having to deal with any of the technical details.
Pagely is a trusted enterprise hosting provider for brands like Disney, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, eBay, Vonage, and thousands of others.
Note: Pagely is our hosting partner for OptinMonster.
7. Yoast
Yoast is the company behind the immensely popular WordPress SEO by Yoast plugin. Yoast provides several WordPress plugins helping millions of users with the optimization of their WordPress sites.
They also offer website SEO, conversion reviews and auditing services. Their client lists include some of the world’s biggest brands.
8. IncSub
IncSub is the company behind WPMUDev and Edublogs. They offer hunderds of free and paid WordPress plugins and themes. The WPMUDev site has more than 350,000 active members.
9. Pippins Plugins
Founded by Pippin Williamson, Pippins Plugins is the company behind the immensely popular Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, and Restrict Content Pro plugins. In a short span of time Pippin’s Plugins has developed a huge customer base and a strong following among the WordPress community.
10. Rocketgenius
Rocketgenius is the company behind Gravity Forms, the contact form plugin loved by everyone. Gravity Forms is admired by developers and site owners alike. With its ease of use, it quickly became the best contact form plugin for WordPress sites.
11. iThemes
The creators of BackupBuddy, iThemes is one of the leading WordPress companies offering wonderful products. Their developer tool kit includes amazing WordPress tools like BackupBuddy, Sync, iThemes security, iThemes exchange, and more.
12. 10up
10up is a web design and consulting firm specializing in open source platforms like WordPress. 10Up contributes hours of development back to the WordPress project by submitting patches and employing dedicated staff to work on the WordPress.org project. They are also one of the featured WordPress.com VIP partners. The company has an impressive list of clients with brands like TechCrunch and organizations like World Economic Forum.
13. Crowd Favorite
Crowd Favorite is a web development agency specializing in WordPress. The company maintains the popular Carrington theme framework, offers several free WordPress plugins, its leadership is widely respected in the WordPress community. They have worked with the leading global brands such as Starbucks, Sony, Walmart, Motorola, MailChimp, etc.
14. Modern Tribe
Modern Tribe is a WordPress design and development agency with a twist. They are a collaborative organization of all freelancers and all experts. The company has only 7 employes, no offices, and 30+ freelancers in 4 countries. They are also creator of The Events Calendar plugin.
15. Web Dev Studios
Web Dev Studios is one of the leading WordPress design and development agencies. They have authored several books on WordPress and are actively involved in the WordPress community. Their clients include several big name brands like Microsoft, Time, MSNBC, NBC, and WPEngine.
They have also contributed several very popular WordPress plugins like Custom Post Types UI, Reactor, and many more.
16. Human Made
A UK based WordPress design and development agency, Human Made is an official WordPress.com VIP partner. They specialize in enterprise scale development for global brands like News Corp, Sony, PayPal, Skype, Airbnb, and many more. They also offer several free and paid WordPress plugins like WPRemote, BackupWordPress, WPThumb, and WordPress Menu Exporter.
17. Flywheel
FlyWheel is a managed WordPress hosting solution built for designers and agencies. The company differentiates itself from other managed WordPress hosting providers by offering a realistic set of features with each plan. It also allows freelancers and designers to build their site and then send it to client to pay for Flywheel hosting.
18. Themify
Themify is a premium WordPress theme and plugins shop. The offer WordPress themes in different categories, catering the needs of different industries. They also offer a club membership where users can access all their products with a subscription program.
19. ThemeFusion
ThemeFusion is the company behind Avada, the top selling WordPress theme on Envato’s Themeforest marketplace. With more than 135,000 active users, Avada is considered by many as the swiss army knife of WordPress themes. The company also offer theme customization and consultation services.
20. Themeco
Themeco is the company behind the famous X WordPress theme. X uses stacks which allow site owners to deploy completely new designs to the X WordPress theme. Themeco is the second top seller on Envatos Themeforest marketplace.
There are two companies that we would have been included into the list, but both of them were acquired by Automattic. WooCommerce the most popular WordPress eCommerce solution, and Code for People, a UK Based WordPress design agency.
The WordPress ecosystem is evolving rapidly and new companies are appearing on a regular basis. Many of them will soon grow to become an influential WordPress businesses in their own niches. There is plenty of room for new businesses to join the WordPress ecosystem and hopefully we will see many more new companies rise to the top in near future.
We hope you found this list inspiring and useful. You may also want to take a look at our list of the top brands using WordPress.
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