I don’t work for Automattic but after spending years trying to “save money” on wordpress hosting I agree just spend the extra cash for a proper managed soloution. Life is too short to spend optimizing page load for your marketing site when its already a solved problem

There is a worry that I have about switching to a company like yours…

What really happens if you decided you didn’t like the products a website sold?

…Would you give them the time to move and take their backups with then or would you immediately hit the delete button on their data?

These are the reasons we switched to self-hosted Wordpress in the beginning. You don’t need to be on HN for long each day to see the same stories being told continuously about how the big guys treat the wee people.

Does wordpress.com used a forked version? Last time I remember that the custom themes were limited for the hosted solution. Maybe this was for performance reasons?

It's not a fork, is WordPress running on the best infrastructure possible: http://wordpress.com/hosting

On the business plan (25/mo) you can run any plugin or theme, or custom code. You also have full SSH/SFTP and wp-cli access.

That plan actually looks really reasonable. I'm pretty sure when I last looked at it many years ago that stuff wasn't possible.

Thanks for WordPress - it's great. I think I first started 'using' it around 2006/2007ish.

Can it run custom plugins?

Yes. You can deploy your custom plugins and themes.

I've got a client using LearnDash, BuddyBoss, WPML, ACF and Woo for their subscription platform. It's dog-slow on the uncached pages, even on a very beefy server with only 5 concurrent users, choking the database apparently. Serving only 2 countries so don't need a CDN per se. (Why) Would this be faster on wp.com?

You should certainly give it a shot.

I just noticed WP.com Business tier exists recently. It’s a no-brain, indeed. On Thursday I signed with you guys and planning to move my site today. (Wish me luck!) Moving will save me ~90% of what I was paying for a managed VPS.

Didn’t know you owned that domain. How/when did you get it?

It's Matt. Automattic CEO.

I know. Still curious about the 2-letter .com though

Domains are my vice. Also have w.org. Ma.tt. I would rather have a cool IP address (like Cloudflare's) or domain than a fancy car or boat.

When are .wp TLDs coming?

They already own .blog

The link in your profile doesnt work - http://www.justin.tv/startupschool/b/298808177

I assume it's this: https://twitch.tv/videos/45877747

Nice! Updated profile.

There was a time when you could register one and two letter domains.

And a time in the 90s when they were actually free. :-)