Better Search Replace Pro Acquired By Delicious Brains Inc


On Monday, January 4th I reached out to Matt Shaw, the author of this plugin, Better Search Replace Pro (BSR)…

slack-matt-brad

The next day we chatted for over an hour on Skype and the day after that we came to an agreement. Matt would start a work trial with Delicious Brains Inc. to see if he’s a fit for us and we’re a fit for him. If that works out, Delicious Brains would acquire BSR and Matt would become a full-time product developer on our team.

About a month later Matt went full-time, we signed some paperwork, wired some money, and it was a done deal. It was straightforward and very quick (probably because we kept lawyers out of it).

Why the acquisition?

Delicious Brains’ flagship product is WP Migrate DB Pro (MDB), a plugin that allows you to push and pull your database and Media Library files between installs of WordPress.

Although there was only a little feature overlap between MDB and BSR, their value proposition was essentially the same: save time migrating a WordPress database. And so it made sense to discuss an acquisition, to combine forces rather than compete. Also, we were hiring and had been planning to build BSR’s primary features into MDB for a long time (since before BSR was even conceived):

in-place-find-replace-github-issue

sql-import-github-issue

So who better to build those features into MDB than Matt, the author of BSR?

In fact, just today we released version 1.7 of MDB with a new in-place find & replace feature very similar to BSR’s. And for MDB 1.8, Matt will be working on an SQL import feature similar to BSR’s.

BSR’s Future

We plan to keep BSR around for as long as MDB. I like to think of BSR as MDB’s little brother product: not as powerful or convenient, but more affordable. Iā€™d like to keep it that way. We aren’t planning to add any big shiny features to BSR in the short term. We’re focusing our efforts on consolidating the two codebases, adding BSR’s features to MDB.

Once we’ve done that, we will start releasing BSR as a build of MDB. We will run a script that assembles BSR from the shared codebase, only including the files necessary for BSR and excluding any files specific to MDB. For example, push/pull features and addons will be excluded. Because much of the code is shared, enhancements and bug fixes applied to MDB will automatically be included in BSR. It will still be called “Better Search Replace Pro” and have all the features it does now (actually it will have more since it will inherit some features from MDB — e.g. ability to exclude post types from search & replace). This means releases more often, quicker bug fixes, and more stability.

For now BSR will call bettersearchreplace.com home, but I could see moving it to deliciousbrains.com in the future so that it’s under the same umbrella as the rest of our products. This blog will only be used to cover BSR news. We’ll continue to write our award winning tutorials, op-ed, and other articles on the Delicious Brains blog. If you’re interested in that and would like to get an email from me once a week when an article goes live, you can subscribe to the email list.

20% Off WP Migrate DB Pro

If you’d like to give WP Migrate DB Pro a try, use the following link to get a 20% discount on your purchase:
https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-migrate-db-pro/?coupon=hellobsr (expires Dec 31, 2016)

I haven’t mentioned our other product, WP Offload S3, but you can also get 20% off with the following link:
https://deliciousbrains.com/wp-offload-s3/?coupon=hellobsr (expires Dec 31, 2016)

Do you think this acquisition is a good thing? Do you have concerns? Either way, please let us know in the comments.

7 comments


  1. Nice acquisition! I’m a MDB user, but have been looking at stumping up for BSR also. As observed, there is some overlap, but I do have need for the in-place search-and-replace feature, especially with the ability to preview the changes in-context.

  2. I’m a very happy owner of a license for both BSR Pro and WP Migrate DB Pro (Developer). It’d be awesome if I could manage my keys for both at deliciousbrains.com. It’d be even more awesome if there was a combo pack. šŸ˜‰

    • It’s almost May 2017 and no combo pack… So, plus one from me for the request. I have an expired developer’s license to MDB, and if you’re going to roll BSR features into that, I’m not sure whether I should grab a BSR Pro lifetime license…

  3. As an avid freeloader of BSR for the last few years it has bailed me out of countless database binds in editing large content volume websites. In terms of a product I think the addition of some basic regex functions and perhaps a slightly more lenient multi-site use price point would make a pro version an exponentially easier sale. BSR is not a daily use end-user plugin, the pitch is at developer sorts that would use it on an infrequent global fixes basis across a range of client websites (as i do with the free version). $30 to $50 I would not blink at buying the script for it’s immediate access to global DB fixes on my clients sites. For $90 I get off my lazy ass and find a work around if the free version. The power in this particular plugin is in it’s simplicity, the free version is incredibly powerful and more importantly useful in innumerate scenarios. Well done on you guys working together, I like how that conversation started and the random curves that lead some projects together is always interesting. All the best and thank you for producing an outstanding wordpress plugin.

  4. Hi,

    We’re a university and we bought your Pro package. Love the product as it’s a safer alternative to using WP CLI’s search replace method.

    Does this tool support wildcard searches? I can’t seem to find documentation on wildcards. If so, how do I indicate a wildcard? Thank you.

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