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I think part of the issue is that Smart Bear readers probably aren't the best market for WPEngine. It's a cool concept, but look at their pricing here: http://

I think part of the issue is that Smart Bear readers probably aren't the best market for WPEngine. It's a cool concept, but look at their pricing here: http://wpengine.com/select-plan http://wpengine.com/select-plan And features here: http://wpengine.com/features http://wpengine.com/features We make Wordpress fast, keep it secure, scale, curate plugins and themes, very easy backups, no lockin, and easy to edit. Outside of the last point, all those features are better geared for a newbie than someone who can handle technology. Scaling, plugins, design, themes, backups, and exporting your data are relatively easier for the Smart Bear audience than the average user. I'm not sure it justifies $50/month at the lowest price point for the convenience if you already have the skills in that area. Ideally, they'd become the go-to platform for people who are already established in some way, but don't want to struggle with the technology too much. Like, a famous chef goes to start a blog, ideally when the chef asks someone for how to do this, that person says, "Oh, you want WP Engine, it's the easiest." $50/month is chips for someone established who decides blogging is a valuable part of their business. But for someone that can handle sifting through documents and research, the price point isn't really worth the features. That might be why the WPEngine didn't get as many sales from the launch notice as anticipated - the feature set seems most valuable for people with less computer-savvy.

dasil003 16y ago
Agreed, it's very much about the applicability of the reputation/traffic. An example of maximum reputation value would be the launch of Basecamp. Although relatively unknown in the startup world, 37signals had a tremendous reputation among UX professionals and the creative agency set. When Basecamp launched it was pretty much guaranteed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because there wasn't an A-list agency in the country that didn't know of it from day one. Another powerful example would be pg and yc. Not only did pg have a devoted following by potential entrepreneurs, but judging from personal experience, he actually did a lot to grow the "market" of potential founders with a very powerfully inspirational mix of narrative and common-sense reasoning in his writing style.
cwilson 16y ago
While I do agree with you that we are great for newbies you'd be surprised at the number of tech-savvy clients we have who simply don't have time to be their own IT guy anymore. This may mean our messaging needs to be revised completely, but I don't think it's true that we're for newbies only. Case in point: Most of our income now comes from very large WordPress sites serving millions of page views and terabytes of traffic. These customers want to focus on their business and not keeping their site up. In fact when we do change up our messaging it may be split down the middle. One part newbie friendly WordPress and one part enterprise level services for a fraction of the cost.
- thwarted 16y ago
  Case in point: Most of our income now comes from very large WordPress sites serving millions of page views and terabytes of traffic. These customers want to focus on their business and not keeping their site up. Shouldn't keeping the site up one of the businesses of a company that runs webservices that serve millions of pages and terabytes of traffic?
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > In fact when we do change up our messaging it may be split down the middle. One part newbie friendly WordPress and one part enterprise level services for a fraction of the cost. I think that'd be smart. One page of features and benefits on why an established blogger should migrate to WP Engine and how much easier and better it'll be there, and one page on how WP Engine makes things super easy and high quality for people just starting out. You're charging premium pricing on the low end, so you'd need to justify that with a lot of features about easy and straightforward it is, and why someone should host with you for $50/month instead of $10/month for shared hosting. The message on the established end would have to be different - about better economies of scale and lowered money or time costs. They're really two very different market segments - I saw your service, and thought it would be suitable and good for a newbie, and something I'd recommend to a non-tech-savvy individual who wants things to just work. I didn't see the value on the high end to migrate there, but it sounds like you do have that value - the challenge now would be to communicate it on the page. It might be easier if you wrote different marketing materials/positioning for each segment. Good luck, it's a cool service and you guys all seem like very good people, and I wish you the best with the company.

dasil003 16y ago

Agreed, it's very much about the applicability of the reputation/traffic. An example of maximum reputation value would be the launch of Basecamp. Although relatively unknown in the startup world, 37signals had a tremendous reputation among UX professionals and the creative agency set. When Basecamp launched it was pretty much guaranteed to succeed or fail on its own merits, because there wasn't an A-list agency in the country that didn't know of it from day one. Another powerful example would be pg and yc. Not only did pg have a devoted following by potential entrepreneurs, but judging from personal experience, he actually did a lot to grow the "market" of potential founders with a very powerfully inspirational mix of narrative and common-sense reasoning in his writing style.

cwilson 16y ago

While I do agree with you that we are great for newbies you'd be surprised at the number of tech-savvy clients we have who simply don't have time to be their own IT guy anymore. This may mean our messaging needs to be revised completely, but I don't think it's true that we're for newbies only. Case in point: Most of our income now comes from very large WordPress sites serving millions of page views and terabytes of traffic. These customers want to focus on their business and not keeping their site up. In fact when we do change up our messaging it may be split down the middle. One part newbie friendly WordPress and one part enterprise level services for a fraction of the cost.

thwarted 16y ago
Case in point: Most of our income now comes from very large WordPress sites serving millions of page views and terabytes of traffic. These customers want to focus on their business and not keeping their site up. Shouldn't keeping the site up one of the businesses of a company that runs webservices that serve millions of pages and terabytes of traffic?
lionhearted 16y ago
> In fact when we do change up our messaging it may be split down the middle. One part newbie friendly WordPress and one part enterprise level services for a fraction of the cost. I think that'd be smart. One page of features and benefits on why an established blogger should migrate to WP Engine and how much easier and better it'll be there, and one page on how WP Engine makes things super easy and high quality for people just starting out. You're charging premium pricing on the low end, so you'd need to justify that with a lot of features about easy and straightforward it is, and why someone should host with you for $50/month instead of $10/month for shared hosting. The message on the established end would have to be different - about better economies of scale and lowered money or time costs. They're really two very different market segments - I saw your service, and thought it would be suitable and good for a newbie, and something I'd recommend to a non-tech-savvy individual who wants things to just work. I didn't see the value on the high end to migrate there, but it sounds like you do have that value - the challenge now would be to communicate it on the page. It might be easier if you wrote different marketing materials/positioning for each segment. Good luck, it's a cool service and you guys all seem like very good people, and I wish you the best with the company.