It looks like StellarWP, at least as we knew it, is gone…
Multiple big WP brands like LearnDash, The Events Calendar, Kadence, GiveWP, Iconic and others have had their websites taken down or redirected to generic Liquid Web landing pages (their parent company). And these are not small brands.. These are products that helped shape the WP ecosystem.
I watched StellarWP with interest since the beginning.
Back in 2020-2021, WordPress product businesses were booming. Acquisitions were everywhere, hosting companies wanted product businesses and Liquid Web built StellarWP as an umbrella for multiple well-known WordPress brands.
On paper, the logic made sense. Shared teams, centralized operations, combined marketing.
But honestly, I never understood the public-facing StellarWP brand.
Why take already established brands with their own communities and identities, then put another corporate brand on top of them? I thought of it like a brand dilution.
Another issue was the mix of products they acquired. Some were huge, some much smaller, all with different realities. And companies (as we also have the example of Envato), the biggest revenue drivers naturally get the focus, while smaller ones risk being neglected. Which makes you wonder why some acquisitions happened in the first place.
I also think many acquisitions from that era were made assuming Covid-era growth would continue forever.. well, it didn’t.
Then came layoffs, restructures, cuts… and now this.
What worries me is what comes next…
I think that the best case would be if these brands get acquired by people who actually understand WordPress products and communities.