Back in February 2019, I wrote a post called “Going From 1,000 to 100,000 WordPress Installs“. At that time, we were just starting our WordPress journey and made the decision to acquire some popular plugins to build the “PublishPress” brand.
Just over three years later, the journey is going strong and we can add an extra zero to the install numbers.
We’ve acquired the popular MetaSlider plugin with over 700,000 installs. The actual transaction took place a few months ago and we’re finally getting around to putting the news out now. In total, our plugins now have over 1 million users.
For more background, WPTavern has a story on the acquisition.
The challenges of scaling up in WordPress
Back in 2019, moving from 1,000 to 100,000 users was a challenge because we were still learning to do things the WordPress way. There are a lot of oddities in the WordPress ecosystem, including the use of SVN on WordPress.org, the Easy Digital Downloads ecosystem, and way the freemium system works.
The popularity of the MetaSlider plugin has been a whole new challenge. Just about everything is more tricky at this scale. There are more edge cases, and they are reported much more quickly. Also, the MetaSlider website is on WooCommerce and it’s the first serious project we’ve run on that platform.
So far, the best solution to all these problems has been to have a good team. Some team members such as Anderson, Valentin, and Kevin have been with us for many years. They make it both fun and possible to take on these new projects.