WP e/acc: What It Means and Why We Named Ourselves After It

When people first see "WP e/acc," they usually ask what it means. Sometimes they ask if it's a typo.

It's not. The name is deliberate, and it signals something about how we think about building software for WordPress.

The reference

"e/acc" stands for "effective accelerationism"—a loosely-defined techno-optimist philosophy that emerged from tech Twitter discourse. The core idea is that technological progress is net positive for humanity and should be accelerated rather than slowed down.

We're not here to debate the broader e/acc movement or its controversies. What we took from it was a specific attitude toward building: ship things, iterate quickly, let markets decide what works, and don't wait for permission.

Applied to WordPress, this becomes WP e/acc: an approach to building for the WordPress ecosystem that emphasizes action over deliberation, shipping over planning, and pragmatism over purity.

What this means in practice

We ship before we're "ready."

Version 1.0 of our plugins wasn't perfect. We knew that when we released them. But they solved real problems for real stores, and the feedback from actual users was more valuable than another month of internal testing.

The WordPress plugin ecosystem is littered with projects that never launched because they weren't "done." They're sitting in developers' local environments, 90% complete forever. We'd rather ship at 80% and iterate to 95% based on what users actually need.

We don't apologize for charging money.

Open source is a development model, not a business model. You can give away software and still need to pay rent. The WordPress ecosystem has a complicated relationship with commercial plugins—some people think everything should be free.

We disagree. Sustainable software requires sustainable revenue. We charge for our plugins, provide excellent support and updates, and make a living doing work we care about. This isn't in tension with the open source ethos. It's what makes long-term commitment to the ecosystem possible.

We build for how WordPress actually works.

WordPress is messy. It carries two decades of backward compatibility. The codebase has layers of technical decisions from different eras. Gutenberg and classic editor coexist. Multiple page builders compete. WooCommerce is transitioning between data storage systems.

Some developers fight this. They build abstractions to hide WordPress's complexity, or they complain that WordPress should be different than it is.

We work with WordPress as it exists. Our plugins integrate with Block Editor, Elementor, and Divi because that's what stores actually use. We support both legacy and HPOS storage because stores are at different stages of migration. Pragmatism beats idealism.

We let users decide what's valuable.

We don't do extensive market research before building features. We identify problems, build solutions, ship them, and see what happens. Features that users love get expanded. Features that users ignore get reconsidered.

The market is a better feedback mechanism than focus groups. Active installs, support requests, and renewal rates tell us more than surveys ever could.

Why WordPress specifically

WordPress powers over 40% of the web. That's not because it's the best-architected CMS or the most elegant codebase. It's because WordPress got the important things right: easy to install, easy to extend, easy to learn enough to be dangerous.

The WordPress ecosystem is permissionless in a way that modern platforms aren't. Anyone can write a plugin and distribute it. Anyone can build a theme and sell it. You don't need approval from Automattic or a slot in an app store. You just build things and release them.

This creates chaos—there are thousands of bad plugins alongside the good ones—but it also creates opportunity. The barrier to entry is low enough that individuals and small teams can compete with well-funded companies.

We think this is worth preserving and accelerating. Every plugin we ship is a vote for the open WordPress ecosystem over closed platforms.

The name as a filter

Naming a company after an internet philosophy meme is a deliberate choice. It's not for everyone. Some people will see "e/acc" and write us off as tech bros or ideologues.

That's fine. The name filters for our people: builders who ship, pragmatists who care more about results than process, people who think the WordPress ecosystem is worth betting on.

If the name resonates with you, you'll probably like our plugins. If it doesn't, there are plenty of other options in the ecosystem. That's the beauty of WordPress—there's room for everyone.

What we're building toward

WP e/acc is currently two people building plugins on the WooCommerce Marketplace. We'd like it to become something larger: a recognizable brand for high-quality, focused WordPress tools built by people who care about the ecosystem.

The Ultimate series will expand. More WooCommerce extensions. Eventually, tools for WordPress beyond commerce. Each one built with the same philosophy: solve a real problem, ship it, iterate based on feedback, charge fairly for the work.

We're not trying to build a plugin empire or get acquired. We're trying to make a sustainable living doing work we find meaningful, for an ecosystem we believe in, with software we're proud of.

That's WP e/acc.