9 Wordpress Plugin Business Success Stories [2024]
If you have used WordPress, you must know you cannot run a successful website without using a few plugins. Ideally, WP plugins help run the website successfully.
Selling WordPress plugins is one of the basic ways you can make money online. Thus, if you have found a solution to an issue, you can develop a plugin for it and earn income from the plugin.
If you are considering starting a WordPress plugin development business, ensure you focus on offering a solution to a particular need.
You can sell WP plugins at online platforms such as CodeCanyon., sell them on your blog, or create a separate website for the plugin.
In this list, you'll find real-world wordpress plugin business success stories and very profitable examples of starting a wordpress plugin business that makes money.
1. Barn2 Plugins ($1.44M/year)
Katie and her husband Andy founded Barn2 Plugins in 2009 as a web design shop. They saw the opportunity to transition into a product business and identified gaps in the market by leveraging their insider knowledge of the industry and researching pain points online. They started with their first product, WooCommerce Password Protected Categories, and focused on low-cost, low-risk solutions that could be quickly developed and launched. Through content marketing and targeted advertising, they have been able to attract and retain customers, generating over $100,000 in monthly revenue with their 16 products.
How much money it makes: $1.44M/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 14
Barn2 Plugins, founded in 2009 by a husband-and-wife duo, sells innovative software products generating over $100,000 in monthly revenue aimed at website owners on the WordPress and WooCommerce platforms, with their first product, WooCommerce Password Protected Categories, launched to market after identifying a gap in the industry.
2. Paid Memberships Pro ($1.2M/year)
After building various websites for clients, Jason and Kimberly Coleman realized the value of focusing on a niche and creating repeatable work. In 2010, they identified a need for a membership platform specifically for WordPress sites and developed Paid Memberships Pro. They launched the plugin in 2011, offering it for free with paid support plans, and eventually shifted to annual pricing to provide ongoing value to customers. The business steadily grew, reaching $100k per month in revenue by 2020.
How much money it makes: $1.2M/year
How much did it cost to start: $30K
How many people on the team: 15
Learn how two entrepreneurs developed a successful open-source membership plugin for WordPress that brought in an average of $100k per month in revenue and grew to over 100,000 sites while offering premium add-ons and support services.
3. LifterLMS ($750K/year)
Chris Badgett noticed a problem during his time running a WordPress agency where they built high-end training-based membership sites from scratch. There wasn't an all-in-one solution that combined membership, LMS, eCommerce, and gamification functionalities. This problem became clear from his personal experience working with clients who needed comprehensive and integrated learning management features.
To validate the idea, Chris proposed the concept to his existing clients and received encouraging feedback, leading to the development of LifterLMS. They started with pre-sales and got 42 customers, including some high-end agency clients, which further validated the need. Balancing resources between client work and product development was a challenge, but they managed by reinvesting service profits into the plugin.
The key lesson Chris learned was the importance of validating the idea with real customers and being willing to invest heavily in development while keeping a close connection with the target audience's needs. This approach ensured that they were solving a genuine problem effectively.
How much money it makes: $750K/year
How many people on the team: 22
4. Zion Builder ($240K/year)
Stefan, the founder of Hogash and ZionBuilder, started his journey in the Joomla and WordPress template/plugins business in 2012. After partnering with various designers and launching the top-selling theme Kallyas, which generated $90,000 in sales in the first month, Stefan focused on improving the theme and expanding his team. In 2018, he decided to build his own site builder solution, Zion Builder, to meet his high standards of quality, code, ease of use, and performance. The product has received great feedback and continues to evolve with each update.
How much money it makes: $240K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 6
Learn how Stefan, founder of Hogash and ZionBuilder, built one of the fastest site builders for WordPress, generating sales of $90,000 in the first month, and utilized community involvement to make an even better product with an AppSumo campaign, as well as his advice for future entrepreneurs.
5. Studio Wombat ($180K/year)
Maarten had started building plugins, mainly to learn more about how WooCommerce worked, and to his surprise, people were interested. That's when he had decided to sell them on Studio Wombat.
How much money it makes: $180K/year
How much did it cost to start: $0
How many people on the team: 0
This case study follows the journey of a web application developer to founding a profitable business selling WooCommerce plugins, with five different plugins selling at around $49 per year each, making well over $15,000/month.
6. Client Portal ($132K/year)
The founder worked previously as a freelancer. She faced difficulties in finding a suitable platform to manage her clients' project assets. Despite trying different project management tools, the quality of these tools proved to be subpar, which led to her using email as the primary mode of communication.
Determined to find a better solution, she decided to create her own platform. She developed a page on her website that allowed clients to log in and access all the project assets that had been collected. She shared her experience with others about the portal and how it had helped her manage customer projects. After receiving a lot of encouragement from her peers, she eventually decided to sell it.
How much money it makes: $132K/year
How much did it cost to start: $5K
How many people on the team: 0
Laura Elizabeth built a $4-10k/month lightweight project management tool for WordPress called Client Portal, which provides clients with a branded, accessible space to access project deliverables and status updates, and has grown organically with the aid of podcasts, email courses, and Google searches.
7. DocPress.it ($9.6K/year)
The founder collaborated with various guest writers for the blogs but faced difficulties in publishing their articles from Google Docs to WordPress.
He had to manually save images separately, and copy-pasting the content didn’t work correctly, depending on the article, it took 30 minutes to format it with the necessary headings, images, and other elements.
To automate these tedious processes, he started working on Google Docs add-ons.
How much money it makes: $9.6K/year
How much did it cost to start: $9K
How many people on the team: 1
DocPress.it founder, Alex, built an add-on for Google Docs that helps users automate the tasks of SEO content analysis, generating article intros with AI, image renaming, and others when publishing content; the platform now has over 1100 users and makes around $500 MRR.
8. Wheely Sales ($7.2K/year)
After conducting some thorough research, the founder noticed that the lucky wheel popup format had started appearing and was proving to be highly effective in converting traffic.
Spin-a-sale and Wheelio, two popular apps available on the Shopify app store, had received hundreds of excellent reviews.
However, the founder realized that these apps were only compatible with Shopify, leaving other major platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, and Squarespace unprovided.
This was enough validation to inspire them to build Wheely Sales - a solution that is compatible with any website or platform and fills this gap in the market.
How much money it makes: $7.2K/year
How many people on the team: 0
Wheely Sales CEO Josh created a lucky wheel popup that has grown revenue from $0 to $600/month in just 4 months since getting started and has attracted over 1.1 million users to his customers’ websites, all while proving that when it comes to creating a product, competition is validation.
9. weMail ($1.44K/year)
Tareq Hasan and his partner Nizam Uddin founded weDevs in 2008, a company focused on building successful WordPress products. After experiencing the need for an affordable and WordPress-based email marketing platform, they developed weMail to save money and offer quality features. Their strategy of targeting the WordPress community and utilizing content marketing has helped attract and retain customers.
How much money it makes: $1.44K/year
How much did it cost to start: $500
How many people on the team: 4
weMail is a WordPress-based email marketing tool that boasts affordable email automation and boasts features such as third-party sending APIs and the ability to integrate for free, with over 12K downloads and 500 active installs.
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Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
Download the report and join our email newsletter packed with business ideas and money-making opportunities, backed by real-life case studies.
