maekit Acquires WP Remote, Plans to Add Cloud-Based Backup Services

maekit, a cloud-based platform that handles the business aspect of web design, has acquired WP Remote from Human Made. Two years after Human Made began searching for a buyer, maekit purchased WP Remote to integrate it with the company’s existing platform that caters to designers managing multiple clients.

“WP Remote had remained a much-loved product with its users and despite receiving no ongoing development it had remained an iconic plugin in the WordPress community,” Human Made CEO Tom Willmot said.

maekit took over WP Remote operations in March after closing the deal. According to maekit CEO Matt Holme, the company inherited 20,000 users with 120,000 WordPress websites. His team has maintained WP Remote in its original platform for the past few months before integrating it into maekit last week.

WP Remote has offered unlimited, free WordPress site management (updating core, plugins, and themes with a single click) since 2010. It hasn’t received ongoing development for several years, but maekit plans to add backup features that will make bring it more up to speed with competitors like MangeWP, MainWP, and InfiniteWP.

“We definitely plan to keep WP Remote free and expand its features,” Holme said. “Specifically we are looking at offering easy-to-manage cloud-based backup services. For example, hook up your Dropbox (or any other popular cloud based storage system) and schedule regular backups of your WP websites.”

maekit’s acquisition of WP Remote gives the company’s customers the ability to deploy WordPress sites with one click and manage client sites and domains through a unified, white-labeled invoicing and payment system. The company has rolled out a few long-overdue bug fixes to WP Remote and Holme says the rest of maekit is functional but still technically in a closed beta mode.

“Our revenue model revolves around direct sale hosting plans and also reselling integrated hosting plans for other leading global hosting providers,” Holme said. “We are refining the free invoicing and payment processing system built into maekit so that a maekit / WP Remote user can deploy a new hosted WP and charge their client a recurring monthly fee and retain the mark up they add on top of our base hosting prices as profit. This means literally no out of pocket expense for maekit / WP Remote users.”

Although maekit’s one-click deployment service supports many popular CMS’s and e-commmerce platforms, including WordPress, Opencart, Drupal, Magento, and Joomla, Holme said the vast majority of the company’s customers are running on WordPress. Acquiring WP Remote brings a host of valuable new features to maekit’s customer base. maekit’s built-in client billing features, customized for freelancers and agencies, are what Holme says will differentiate the company from its competitors in the WordPress space.

“I have a great deal of respect for these other WP management platforms and feel the size of the WP market means there is opportunity for all to succeed,” Holme said. “With the features of maekit also including new website deployment, invoicing, payment processing and client management, our platform is unique from the others.”