WP Engine, the world’s most trusted WordPress technology company, announced all Local tools and features for WordPress development, including those previously exclusive to Local Pro, are now free to everyone. Local is the most relied upon set of local WordPress developer tools and solutions with almost 300,000 users who enjoy its easy development environment to build WordPress sites, test those sites and speed up their development workflow.

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“We believe Local Pro features benefit a broader WordPress developer community and we want to deliver the full value of Local to more developers than ever. We want to empower the freedom to create on WordPress by making all Local features available for free.”

Local is the fastest, easiest way to build and develop WordPress websites on a computer. Even without access to the internet, with just a few clicks Local can install WordPress and create a site. Whether it’s for an expert developer or someone looking to learn local WordPress development, Local is the best tool recommended by developers worldwide.

“We’re doubling-down on our commitment to give back to the WordPress community by making all Local tools and features, including those formerly only available with a paid Local Pro subscription, free and available to all Local users,” said Seth Halpern, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Small and Medium Business for WP Engine. “We believe Local Pro features benefit a broader WordPress developer community and we want to deliver the full value of Local to more developers than ever. We want to empower the freedom to create on WordPress by making all Local features available for free.”

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Benefits and Features

Local provides developers with a sandbox to experiment and develop new sites faster. It also lets developers focus on what’s important—building and launching WordPress sites—rather than spending all their time debugging local environments.

One of the most common benefits Local users cite is its intuitive and easy-to-use interface, which makes it possible to publish sites with just a few clicks, easily pull down live sites for offline edits, and sync various developer tools for an overall simplified workflow. While Local Pro provided access to a wider set of powerful pre-launch tools, all of those features are now available for free in Local, including:

• Live Links – Send a near-real time preview link of sites to clients without deploying to staging or production
• MagicSync – Push website updates live with additional file-specific control that includes recommendations for updated, added and deleted files
• Link Checker – Scan and find problem links on a website to avoid issues later
• Instant Reload – Save time by working with the site code and browser side-by-side to maintain flow-state and streamline previewing CSS changes
• Cloud Backups – Sync Local accounts to Google Drive or Dropbox to save ongoing work and add a site backup to Local whenever needed.

Fuel the freedom to create with WP Engine

WP Engine powers the freedom to create on WordPress. The company’s products, the fastest among all WordPress providers, power 1.5 million digital experiences. More of the top 200,000 sites in the world use WP Engine to power their digital experiences than anyone else in WordPress.