Announcement: AutomateWoo joins Prospress

tl;dr – Today I’m very excited to announce the beginning of a new chapter for AutomateWoo. AutomateWoo has been acquired by Prospress and will become part of their family of WooCommerce products. I will also be joining the Prospress team and will continue to lead the development of AutomateWoo. You might not have heard of Prospress before, but there is a good chance you have used one of their products. Prospress helps thousands of people prosper with WordPress by building software that customers love. I strongly believe they are a perfect fit for AutomateWoo and that this acquisition is best for its future.

The story

This time last year, shortly after I began my year abroad, I drove from Cologne to Paris to attend my first WordCamp; WordCamp Europe 2017. It was an amazing experience which opened my eyes to the larger WordPress world. I had been working alone on AutomateWoo for about two years, so it was refreshing to meet some of the talented people working in the WordPress space. People such as Brent Shepherd, founder of Prospress, fellow Australian and industry legend.

I spotted Brent in the sponsor hall and knew I needed to say g’day. I remember being surprised that he had not only heard of AutomateWoo, but had used it and even read the code! We talked about many things and I appreciated Brent’s openness as he shared about his past challenges and experiences. I was personally encouraged by the conversation since it seemed like I was currently facing many of the same challenges with AutomateWoo.

While in Paris, I also had the privilege of meeting the friendly folk at Prospress. As I got to know Brent and the team, I realised that this was exactly the kind of company I had always wanted to work for. We shared similar values and a passion for building quality products.

Dinner last night with the team, friends of Prospress, and the most entertaining waiters ever. Lols galore #Prosparis pic.twitter.com/UptQRwNCc5

— Prospress (@Prospress) June 17, 2017

In the following months, I worked with Prospress on some improvements to AutomateWoo’s integration with their popular WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin. However, for the most part, I continued to work solo on AutomateWoo. I noticed more and more that a larger team was needed to realise my vision for the plugin and to meet the demands of its growing customer base. So it’s for these reasons that I began a discussion with Brent about acquiring AutomateWoo that has led us to today.

Thank you!

To all AutomateWoo customers, I want to say a huge thank you for supporting the project! Working on AutomateWoo has honestly been a dream come true for me personally and I’m fully aware that it would not have been possible without you. Thank you also for your feedback which has influenced the direction of the plugin probably more than you realise.

What this means for AutomateWoo customers?

Rest assured that AutomateWoo will continue to exist and we don’t have any significant changes planned for existing customers. I will continue to lead development and direction of AutomateWoo and you can certainly still reach me via the support form.

We will begin to grow a team around AutomateWoo which will speed up development of new features and offer support from multiple time zones. We will also be working to improve the documentation and create more tutorials and case studies to help you get the most out of AutomateWoo.

You’ll start to see the Prospress logo appear in a few places and any new orders placed on the site will be with Prospress.

In conclusion

Thank you again for being part of the AutomateWoo journey. I’m really looking forward to taking the project to the next level with Prospress! If you want to know more, head over to Brent’s post on the Prospress blog.

Got questions or concerns? Feel free to reach us at hello@automatewoo.com or in the comments below.