Automattic Acquires WooCommerce, An Ecommerce Platform Company

Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has acquired WooCommerce, an e-commerce tool company. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. But sources said Automattic has spent more than $30 million in cash and stock to buy the e-commerce platform. 

WooCommerce is a popular plugin for Wordpress into a store, It helps WordPress publishers sell stuff online. It powers more than 600,000 sites and competes with likes of Shopify and BigCommerce. WooCommerce's software is free, but charges extra for features such as appointment booking, subscription pricing and product recommendation engines. Automattic plans to bake WooCommerce's features into the company's subscription service for enterprise users. 

Founded by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress is a free, open source blogging tools and content management system (CMS). Its the most popular blogging platform in use on the web with more than 60 million websites.

This is not the first time Automattic has acquired a company within its plugin store, last year it acquired WordPress security plugin BruteProtect. Automattic says it expects the deal to close within the next month. 

Image Credit: WordPress.org

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