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StellarWP Acquires Learning Management System LearnDash

StellarWP announced today that it acquired LearnDash, a learning management system (LMS) for WordPress. The product allows educators to create online courses, quizzes, and dynamic content. LearnDash will continue to operate autonomously, keeping its team intact.

In May, Liquid Web launched its new umbrella brand, StellarWP, alongside its acquisition of Impress.org and its flagship product, GiveWP. iThemes, The Events Calendar, Restrict Content Pro, and Kadence WP are included in this family. Each of the brands operates independently. Essentially, StellarWP functions as a “branded house” but is very much a “house of brands,” according to Chris Lema, who will be switching roles and taking the General Manager position for LearnDash.

The LearnDash acquisition is StellarWP’s largest to date, but the company did not provide a specific dollar amount.

The LMS market size grew to $10.84 billion in 2020. It is projected to increase to over $13 billion in 2021, according to Fortune Business Insights. However, when asked why the company was jumping into the space, Lema talked about the vision.

“The way I think about things is less about the bottom line and more about the larger vision,” he said. “At Liquid Web, we believe that things will continue to get more abstracted for customers. They will want, less and less, to deal with the complexities of hosting. They don’t really want ‘managed’ hosting or even ‘managed WordPress’ hosting. They want a hosted solution. In other words, they want a solution that works. If they need it hosted, great. If they already have a host, great. So we’ve been focused on building a solutions-orientation toward folks who are doing digital commerce or are building digital commerce solutions for their customers.”

He said that LearnDash fits perfectly into that vision for the company.

In some ways, the global COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 may have hit the fast-forward button in many online sectors. The landscape shifted for small and large businesses. More people have had opportunities to take online courses or even create their own.

“Yes, we saw a dramatic increase in the take rate on online learning platforms across the entire space,” said Lema. “Last year saw a COVID dip for many, but for online learning, it was a bump. That said, I think we’re seeing the numbers drop back down a bit into a more normal but elevated range based on what happened last year. And most importantly, more people than ever have tried their hands at online learning, and I don’t think that’s going to stop.”

Now that Liquid Web and StellarWP have built a library of multiple products, one question is how the company might begin to tie them together. There are some easy wins with cross-product integration that would fit into the vision of selling solutions.

“Yes, we think so too,” said Lema. “RCP and LearnDash, GiveWP and LearnDash, LearnDash and Nexcess, and more. I think we’ll see a lot of collaborations across the StellarWP brands. But to be clear, each brand runs independently, so for LearnDash, we’re still focused on all sorts of other integrations, from chat to testimonials to CRM to better Zoom integration.”

While he did not offer any specifics, it is likely in the cards in some form. Each of these is robust a product that, when used together, can provide a powerful toolset for building commerce-based websites.

Lema wrote a more in-depth post on his personal blog about integrations being a vital strategy for business growth. He shared a riddle that he likened to the WordPress ecosystem.

“I thought about it because it’s a bit of a parable for how I see so many product owners in the WordPress ecosystem build their plugins – as if there’s no one else in the world, building anything else that a customer might use with their product,” he wrote.

We will have to wait to see what sort of integrations LearnDash might have in the future. For now, the team is working on the roadmap for its updated course grid and version 4.0 feature release. The update should include dynamic learning paths.

“The reality in online learning is that students don’t move in a linear fashion through material like the instructor always hopes,” said Lema. “Or maybe an instructor wants to support an almost choose-your-own-adventure approach. I know in my coaching, I don’t move everyone through the same lessons in the same order. So we’re excited to innovate in this space.”

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Sound Off! How Has ManagedWP Weathered the Acquisition?

Back in September of 2016, GoDaddy acquired ManageWP. What was odd about the acquisition was the amount of backlash that was generated by ManageWP customers.

While most were happy for Vladimir Prelovac, founder of ManageWP, many customers worried about GoDaddy’s reputation, unsatisfactory service, and how such a great service would fit into GoDaddy without changing much in the process.

Nearly three years later, Prelovac is no longer with the company as he quietly left soon after the acquisition. I reached out on Twitter to ManageWP customers who stayed with the service through the transition and asked if they’re pleased with their service and if it has improved. Here are a few of the responses I received.

If you use ManageWP and have been a customer since the acquisition, let us know in the comments about how the service has evolved. Have you noticed any significant changes?

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WP Engine Acquires Flywheel

In a move that caught some people by surprise, WP Engine has announced that it has reached a definitive agreement to acquire Managed WordPress host, Flywheel.

While financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Heather Brunner, WP Engine’s CEO confirmed to TechCrunch that the company needed to raise a small round of funding to finance the deal.

Dusty Davidson, Tony Noecker, and Rick Knudtson founded Flywheel in 2012 in Omaha, Nebraska. In 2012, there were already a handful of players in the Managed WordPress Hosting space but Flywheel was able to carve out a niche by focusing on Designers and Agencies.

In 2016, Flywheel became one of the few hosting companies added to the WordPress.org recommended hosting page. However, their listing was removed a few months later without an explanation.

Also in 2016, Flywheel acquired Pressmatic, a local WordPress development application for OS X from Clay Griffiths and rebranded it to Local by Flywheel. Representatives from both companies have stated that there are no plans to merge WP Engine Devkit with Local by Flywheel.

According to a frequently asked questions document, nothing much is changing in the foreseeable future for Flywheel customers.

Business will continue as usual! There will be no immediate changes to the Flywheel platform, plans, or experience. We’ll be spending the coming weeks and months on strategic innovation and integration planning, and are super excited to figure out how we can leverage all of our collective strengths, products, and brand assets in the best possible way.

Acquisition FAQ

Flywheel has generated a loyal following of happy customers over the years and some of them took to Twitter to express their concerns regarding Monday’s announcement.

Seeing these types of responses from customers is a testament to the level of service Flywheel provides. Many of them explained why they chose to host their clients with Flywheel over WP Engine.

Both companies have vowed to keep customers in the loop of any potential changes to plans, services, or products. While each company will operate independently as things are sorted out, it will be interesting to see how the two companies are integrated over time and how customers respond.

If you’re a Flywheel customer, please let us know what you think about the acquisition in the comments below.

To learn more about the deal, check out the following links.

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Pantheon Acquires Visual Regression Testing Platform StagingPilot

Panethon, a managed host geared towards Drupal and WordPress sites, has acquired StagingPilot. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. Nathan Tyler, founder of StagingPilot, and his brother Phil Tyler will be brought into the company.

StagingPilot is a four year old company that runs a barrage of visual regression tests on WordPress sites before they’re automatically updated.

StagingPilot creates a copy of the site and places it into a staging environment. The service then conducts a number of tests that include, checking for visual errors, a white screen of death, and elements on a page disappearing. A number of snapshots are created along with a detailed report on the errors that are discovered.

Josh Koenig, Co-Founder and Head of Product at Pantheon, says the acquisition puts the company within reach of the ‘Holy Grail’ of WebOps.

“Once you have a hundred sites (or heck, even twenty), the grind of keeping up with routine updates can be daunting,” Koenig said. “Our existing WebOps tools let our customers automate a lot of that maintenance, but building and managing that automation is on them. We want our users to automate their operations, not operate their automation.”

Pantheon plans to integrate StagingPilot into its offerings in three phases. First, it will migrate StagingPilot’s technology into its existing managed updates feature and extend it beyond WordPress to support Drupal.

Then, the company plans to fully integrate the service with its organizational features providing substantial benefits to agency partners or those who manage many sites.

The third phase looks to take advantage of services such as Google’s applied learning machines to create AI-driven testing.

Out-of-the box, WordPress only updates minor versions automatically and leaves major updates, plugins, and themes up to the user. One of the most common fears of enabling auto-updates is having something on the site break.

Often, the process of testing updates is left up to the consultant or whoever manages the site. Depending on the size or number of sites being managed, it can become a major time suck.

Hosting companies like Pantheon with StagingPilot, LiquidWeb, and others are easing the fear of auto updates in general and saving people a lot of time by using automatic visual regression testing.

To learn more about StagingPilot and to see Nathan demo the service in-person, check out this episode of WPshowandtell hosted by Jason Tucker.

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ICYMI: Idera, Inc. Acquires Travis CI

Back in January, productivity tool provider Idera, Inc. acquired Travis CI to add to its Testing Tools division to further expand its lineup.

In an email from Idera CEO Randy Jacops sent March 4, Mr. Jacops reiterated Idera's intention to foster and grow innovation with the Travis CI tool with a promise to "communicate future product roadmap reviews, webinars, and related content" to its users.