On 11 October 2005 phpWordPress staff announced a limited-time Developer licence promotion: $400 off, plus an extra $200 worth of customisation work. The post said the Developer licence included unlimited fully rebrandable licences and lifetime support with priority phone support and free updates. It gave no end date.
From the original phpWordPress forum · archived copy
phpWordPress staff (Product Line Manager) ·
Special Fall Promotion � Developer�s Dream! For a limited time period, we offer you a $400 discount on our Developer�s License and we�ll also throw in an extra $200 worth of customization work for you! Remember, with the purchase of the Developer�s License you are entitled to an unlimited number of fully rebrandable licenses, as well as lifetime support including priority phone support and free updates. This license will save your time and money for many years to come. Contact our sales staff at [email removed] to take advantage of this unique deal.
View the archived thread on the Wayback Machine. Usernames and contact details have been removed.
On 11 October 2005, phpWordPress staff posted a “Special Fall Promotion” aimed at developers. For a limited period, the Developer licence carried a $400 discount, and the company added $200 worth of customisation work. The post gave no end date and pointed interested buyers to the sales team.
The post also described the licence. A Developer buyer was entitled to an unlimited number of fully rebrandable licences and lifetime support, including priority phone support and free updates. In practice this meant an agency could build sites for clients under its own branding.
The archived pricing chart later shows the Developer package at $999, reduced from $1399, with the same promotion text printed below the table. That is a record of the offer as advertised, not of how many people took it up.
phpWordPress was a commercial PHP article manager from Spoonlabs. It was renamed Vivvo in July 2006 and was unrelated to WordPress. This thread belongs to the product’s commercial story rather than its technical one: the company sold to developers who resold the software to publishers. The news timeline places it among the other notices of 2005, and the 3.0 launch followed within a week.
Sources
- On 11 October 2005 phpWordPress staff announced, for a limited time, a $400 discount on the Developer's License plus an extra $200 worth of customisation work. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The post said the Developer's License entitled buyers to an unlimited number of fully rebrandable licences and lifetime support, including priority phone support and free updates. — source, checked 10 October 2026.
- The archived pricing chart showed the Developer package at $1399 struck through and $999, with the same promotion text below the chart. — source, checked 10 October 2026.