If you’re looking for a plugin that can integrate events, bookings, and ticketing functionality into your website, FooEvents is a popular choice. Using it will let you sell unlimited tickets and bookings and manage event registrations from your WooCommerce website, even if you have limited technical skills.
FooEvents is currently serving plenty of customers all over the globe and has even become a full event management product site. And they credit using InstaWP as one of the ways to get to their current level of growth, thanks to InstaWP’s ability to create demo sites.
In this case study, we chat with Robin Pietersen, co-founder of Grenade, the technology company behind FooEvents and FooSales, to learn how adopting InstaWP in their workflow helped them achieve impressive growth.
Can you tell us more about Grenade and FooEvents?
Sure! So my partner Colin Daniels and I are the founders of Grenade, a tech company behind FooEvents and FooSales. We started it in 2012 as a digital service agency based in South Africa. Over time, we pivoted away from service work and now focus entirely on creating WooCommerce solutions that empower thousands of businesses and entrepreneurs worldwide.
It wasn’t an easy journey for us. Since starting, we have built several digital products that we tried to sell online. To be honest, most of them failed.
But we got a breakthrough product in 2015 when one of our clients needed to sell tickets for an event. We looked at different possible solutions and discovered they were too expensive, over-complicated, cumbersome, poorly coded, or all of the above.
Because of that, we decided to build our ticket plugin, and that’s how FooEvents came to be. FooEvents is perfect for anyone looking to add event, booking, and ticketing functionality to their WordPress website. It’s easy to use, seamlessly integrated into WooCommerce and was designed to be the fastest, most flexible, and most reliable way to sell tickets using WooCommerce.
It also requires minimal technical skill–you only need a basic understanding of WordPress. Currently, FooEvents has helped thousands of customers sell millions of tickets. FooEvents has matured to include several plugin extensions and free iOS and Android Check-ins apps.
And thanks to FooEvents’ success, we had the opportunity to build FooSales, a secure WooCommerce point-of-sale system that turns any computer, iPad, or Android tablet into a retail platform.
How did you first become aware of InstaWP, and what problem were you trying to solve when you first considered InstaWP?
Since FooEvents was a plugin, it would be better if we could demonstrate how it works to potential customers. We used to do that by installing a WordPress Multisite or WPMU. The problem was that the installation was challenging to manage and distracted us from more important activities.
I was already looking for alternative solutions, and one day, I heard about InstaWP via a Post Status Slack shortly after it launched. Our company decided to give it a go, and we’re glad we did. The results have been superb!
How did you evaluate InstaWP and other options before making your purchase decision?
Even if we already saw some alternative solutions to the WPMU process, we needed something to fit our requirements well. So when I saw that Post Status Slack, I quickly chatted with Vikas, I learned that InstaWP would be rolling out new features like shared templates and custom domains–all of which were perfect with what we were doing.
We tried out InstaWP first for a few weeks and compared it to our existing WPMU system, and, well, InstaWP just worked better. It was a no-brainer to make the switch.
Have you experienced any challenges while using InstaWP, and if so, how did you overcome them?
We encountered only a few very minor issues. Most of what we needed from InstaWP was available even at the start. When we do run into any issues, InstaWP’s support has been super responsive–issues were resolved within minutes!
How do you use InstaWP daily, and what features do you find valuable?
We love the instant site creation. InstaWP also helps us build product demos quickly for potential customers. We also find the shared templates feature very handy: we have quickly generated over 600 pre-configured customer admin demo sites using it.
We have since expanded our use of InstaWP and now use it for FooSales admin demos, internal development environments, customer support, and feature testing. We have even recently started to use it to generate temporary sites for our tutorial videos.
“We love the instant site creation. InstaWP also helps us build product demos quickly for potential customers.“
~ Robin Pietersen, Co-Founder of Grenade
How much time do you or your team save daily by using InstaWP?
InstaWP saves us probably around a minimum of an hour in our workflow.
Can you share specific results or metrics demonstrating the impact of InstaWP on your business?
Currently, we’re still working on finding a way to track resulting sales. But remember those 600 pre-configured customer admin demos sites we generated using InstaWP? The demos have worked exceptionally well–many of these have resulted in sales!
Plus, we have discovered that moving various activities over to InstaWP has reduced our hosting overheads by approximately 25%. Using InstaWP is definitely something good for us.
How do you see InstaWP fitting into your long-term business strategy?
InstaWP has increasingly become a vital tool, and I don’t see this changing any time soon. In the long term, I am hopeful that we can find more ways to add value to our customers using InstaWP.
Would you recommend InstaWP to other businesses, and if so, why?
Definitely! We have been blown away by the rate this platform has evolved and by the consistent quality of the support that Vikas and his team continually provide. It’s truly remarkable, and we proudly recommend InstaWP.
Conclusion
To sum things up, Grenade, the technology company behind FooEvents and FooSales, has benefited greatly from using InstaWP. With its instant site creation, shared templates feature, and responsive support team, InstaWP has helped Grenade save time and reduce costs while generating pre-configured customer admin demo sites that have resulted in sales.
Grenade has permanently integrated InstaWP into their workflow and proudly recommends using it!
So if you want to use InstaWP for your website or business, why not follow Grenade’s lead and try InstaWP? Sign up for a free trial today – click here to get started!
*Answers have been edited for clarity and conciseness
