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ServerPress, makers of DesktopServer, a WordPress local development tool, announced it is shutting down after 12 years in business. The company emailed its customers and posted a farewell message on its website after disabling new purchases and is in the process of canceling renewals for existing subscriptions.
ServerPress was founded by Steve Carnam in 2010. His leadership helped the company remain independent of large hosting companies that have scooped up WordPress development tools of all kinds. Carnam described how the market has changed, forcing ServerPress’ partners to make the difficult decision to close:
Earlier this year, one of the team members questioned whether or not DesktopServer v5.0 would have a viable market share. We had been so focused on building it out that throughout the development, we lost sight of constantly checking the temperature in the room. Once we started discussing this we came to the conclusion that DS5’s potential market share has changed significantly over the last 10 years. The WordPress development tool landscape has grown and diversified greatly. This has diluted DesktopServer’s overall market share. The time, effort, and costs to bring in new users to DesktopServer’s workflow would be too much overhead for ServerPress to be sustainable. While many larger, well-funded companies would be able to absorb such costs involved, a company of our position cannot.