WP Engine Disables Revisions by Default! WordPress Founder Matt Mullenweg Publicly Criticizes at WCUS 2024

At the 2025 WordCamp US (WCUS), Automattic founder Matt Mullenweg publicly criticized WP Engine’s WordPress Managed Hosting service, accusing them of disabling the WordPress Revisions feature by default. This feature, originally part of the WordPress core, helps users save automatic content version control, which is critical for website management and content rollback.

WP Engine’s Revisions Settings

According to Matt, WP Engine’s managed hosting service disables the Revisions feature by default. Users must contact WP Engine’s support team to enable it, and even after activation, the revision count is limited to a maximum of three.

For website managers who need frequent editing and version rollback, this setup is inconvenient, equivalent to WP Engine offering a WordPress that is not truly WordPress.

Matt openly stated at WCUS that this approach diminishes WordPress’ core functions and severely infringes upon users’ rights.

Twitter Poll

In addition to his speech at the event, Matt launched a Twitter poll, asking the WordPress community for feedback. The poll question was: “How should WordPress respond to hosting providers that modify core features of WordPress?”

You can participate in the poll and see more details:

Official Expanded Statement of WordPress

The following day, on September 22, 2024, Matt published an official post on the WordPress website titled “The WP Engine Revisions Policy Problem: A Challenge to Core Integrity”

He elaborated on the severity of this issue and emphasized the importance of preserving the integrity of WordPress core features for all users.

Additional Reminder: Choose Your Hosting Providers Carefully

It should be noted that not only WP Engine, but some smaller hosting providers, resellers, and even certain website development companies (web agencies) may quietly disable the Revisions feature, claiming it improves the “user experience.” In reality, this may simply be a way to save their own resource costs or hide performance issues by improving their server efficiency.

Therefore, when choosing hosting providers or web agencies, it is crucial to carefully select those who prioritize WordPress core functionality design and are truly user-oriented. This ensures that you get a complete, powerful website experience that enhances the value of your business with high customization and scalability. For those building their own sites, it is important to understand concepts like version control, maintenance, and hosting distinctions. Start by learning more about “how to maintain, back up, and update WordPress and plugins”, which will help with both managing your own site and selecting vendors or differentiating between hosting and maintenance services.

References

Matt Mullenweg’s Speech at WCUShttps://wordpress.org/news/2024/09/wp-engine/

Twitter Poll Linkhttps://x.com/photomatt/status/1837303425106837784

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