Awesome Support
Awesome Support is the most versatile help desk and support software for WordPress. It transforms your existing WordPress site into a fully functional ticketing system.
TL;DR
I build a support software business from the ground up. In the span of 3 years, I took the business from nothing to over 4,000 active users, thousands of dollars of monthly recurring revenues, and a 90% customer satisfaction average.
Finally, I sold this business for a 2.7 multiple (above industry average) in August 2016.
Origins
Awesome Support was born to fill a gap in N2Clic’s own support process.
While there were support tools on the market, none of them were satisfying. Tools like ZenDesk are great for big companies but way too bloated for small businesses. After lots of trials, we realized that, if we wanted something perfect for us, we’d have to design it.
In May 2013, we released the first version of Awesome Support.
Releasing the software was easy. Facing customers, bug reports and complaints wasn’t. It was our first consumer product and we were not prepared.
Evolution
Thankfully, it was not all bad. Actually, it was mostly good! We quickly started getting great feedback and improvement requests. We started working on Awesome Support a lot harder that what we initially planned.
The plugin author went out of his way to help. Great support experience. If you need a ticketing system, give this one a whirl.
We reached 1,000 paid customers within one year. In addition to great satisfaction, this gave us a ton of experience in product development and management. So much so that, one and a half year, we decided it was time for a big change.
We reached a point where we needed to either evolve or stale.
Late 2014, we released version 3 of the software. It was not only a huge technical update, it was also a completely new economic model that we adopted. It took us 8 months of hard work to do it, but it was worth it.
The Right Strategy
All of the work paid off.
Awesome Support is a fantastic plugin. It has just moved from a highly successful paid plugin on CodeCanyon to the brand new free v3 on WordPress.org.
From a paid-only product, we changed Awesome Support into a “freemium” product: the core software was free, and revenues were generated by the sale of support and extended features.
Awesome Support now has well over 4,000 active users and brings thousands of dollars in recurring revenues. The customer satisfaction is very good on average (90% satisfaction) and the software keeps being improved with both internal ideas and regular features requests.
Exit
Because of my main company, N2Clic Ltd., ceasing its activity, Awesome Support has been sold to a new owner in August 2016. The software is still available and keeps striving.
The sale price went up to a 2.7 multiple, which is definitely above average in this particular industry.