Newfold Digital, the parent company of Bluehost, Yoast, and Web.com, has acquired YITH, a WordPress plugin company with more than 100 WooCommerce extensions.
YITH’s has more than 2.3 million active installs across its suite of products. The company hosts 31 plugins on WordPress.org, many that are lite versions with commercial upgrades. YITH’s most popular product, the YITH WooCommerce Wishlist plugin, is active on more than 900,000 WooCommerce sites.
YITH founder and CEO Nando Pappalardo said he started this endeavor in 2011, in a small apartment in Southern Italy. The project later became YITH, a company that has grown to employ 46 people. All YITH employees, including its leadership team, will join Newfold Digital as part of the acquisition.
“The acquisitions of YITH and Yoast last year are a part of a long-term strategy to provide the best solutions to our WordPress customers and further our expertise,” Newfold Digital President Ed Jay said.
“As a company providing WordPress solutions, we’re always looking for opportunities to create better customer experiences to help our customers succeed. YITH will allow us to offer a world-class WooCommerce experience and make it easier for our 7 million small business customers to thrive online, similar to how Yoast helped with SEO.”
The YITH team currently maintains nearly 150 plugins, with a much smaller number available on WordPress.org. Jay said that Newfold Digital plans to work with YITH to “expand the plugins available in the directory to reach more online sellers.”
Pappalardo confirmed that YITH will remain an independent brand, while improving its products and developing new e-commerce business solutions at Newfold Digital.
“The only difference is that now we will have the strength and drive of a partner that will allow us to break through,” Pappalardo said.
“We have hundreds more [plugins] on the idea board. Our solutions will still be available on our website and through WordPress.org. There are no plans to remove our free products from WordPress.org or change our current support for them. Existing customers will continue to be able to use YITH products as they do today. Additionally, our team will be exploring new solutions for our customers but also finding ways to introduce YITH products at the beginning of the website process.”