Love them or hate them, it appears that GoDaddy.com is about to throw down and enter the managed WordPress hosting arena. While WordPress is already the most popular installation among GoDaddy hosting plan subscribers, a recent email blast to registered WordCamp Phoenix 2014 attendees shows that it’s ready to battle it out with established managed hosting providers like Flywheel, ManageWP, Pagely and WP Engine.
The news was shared yesterday by Sé Reed in the OC WordPress meetup group forum, who re-posted this email from GoDaddy. While no specific features or functions were mentioned, it is an interesting development from the world’s #1 domain registrar.
The email reads:
“GoDaddy is working on a Managed WordPress product and would love feedback from WordCamp Phoenix 2014 registrants. This new product offers optimal performance and security and automatically provides updated versions of WordPress. While you can already create and host an amazing WordPress site now, your feedback will help us build the features you want the most.”
What is your reaction to this news? Should GoDaddy be invading the space of established WordPress managed hosting solutions? Is this a genuine good-faith effort by GoDaddy or merely a play for pandering to the WordPress community? Let me hear you!
If I had to guess, this trend may end with lot of these managed WP services getting purchased.
A lot of big hosting companies with very deep pockets are going to pick up some of these (still fairly small by hosting company standards) managed WP hosts.