Elementor in the room 🐘
POST STATUS SLACK EXCLUSIVE 🗨️
A recent conversation in Post Status Slack centers on Elementor. The company targeted “full-site editing” in some of its Google ads.
Community member Birgit Pauli-Haack is the publisher of Gutenberg Times and a contributor to Gutenberg. She noted on February 25:
Elementor is targeting “WordPress Full Site Editing” for their ads, and also runs an ad “Frustrated with WordPress? Use Elementor.”
To be fair, companies often buy competitors’ keywords for ads. It’s the wording that seems to criticize WordPress itself that has not gone over well.
🍻 On March 1, Sarah Gooding reported on the story and Slack discussion at the WordPress Tavern and Elementor representative Ben Pines joined Post Status Slack. Pines has claimed his company is merely advertising for a generic feature set when it refers to “full site editing” in ads.
Matt Mullenweg publicly reached out:
“I think Elementor would be successful even if you didn’t look at the names and features Gutenberg is launching, then try to co-opt them in your marketing. Full site editing was not a widespread generic industry term inside or outside of the WP community before we announced it… It’s not a trademark thing, just a common decency thing.”
Ben offered to get on a call with Matt. He also stressed that at Elementor, they “believe in WordPress and … fully support the project.” They believe “like WordPress, in democratizing the web and adding value to the community, working together to do so.”
