WP Engine, a company that regulates WordPress websites for businesses has raised $250 million in funding led by private equity giant Silver Lake. It is one of the largest WordPress hosts available in the market.
The company intends to use the recently acquired financing to accelerate its international growth and continue to develop its Digital Experience Platform, the product that forms the formation of its primary line of business. The company did not comment anything about its valuation but it estimated that it would be somewhere around $444 million post this round of funding.
WP Engine has over 75,000 customers now which is 30% more than that of last year. The company makes over $100 million in annual recurring revenue. Around 5% of all the internet traffic is powered by WP Engine and WordPress itself accounts for 29% of the entire internet as against 13% in 2010.
This quarter billion dollar investment is the largest single investment in Austin technology company since vacation rental site HomeAway raised $250 million in 2008. In 2011, Austin-based online coupon company RetailMeNot raised a single $100 million investment. Both the companies were acquired by larger players in the market after having successful initial public offerings. HomeAway was acquired by Expedia for $3.9 billion in 2015 RetailMeNot by Harland Clarke for $630 million in 2015.
Industry analysts have claimed that WordPress is one of the most widely used content management systems because it is open-source, affordable, flexible and easy to use for smaller businesses who want to get into the world of internet right away. WP Engine assists individuals in building and running WordPress websites and applications. It then hosts the website on its servers. However, along with web hosting, WP Engine provides several other services that help customers in making more powerful and better websites. It has integrations with popular services like AWS and Google Cloud Platform to provide analytics, security and support which makes WP Engine a complete package for a company’s digital operations, from developers to marketers and others.
As a part of the contract, Wittlinger, Greg Mondre, and Mark Gillett of Silver Lake are joining the board of WP Engine.
