StellarWP is home to various amazing commerce and non-profit WordPress plugins. Founded in 2021 by the Liquid Web team, it is a key figure in the WordPress community. Yes – the same team that built The Events Calendar, LearnDash, GiveWP, KadenceWP, SolidWP, and IconicWP.
The organization is always seeking to streamline operations and elevate customer experiences, and that’s where StellarWP’s General Manager encountered InstaWP – only to become our valuable customer.
StellarWP uses InstaWP for Building Sites, Testing & Demos.
This case study uncovers the hurdles faced by StellarWP, their encounter with InstaWP, and the impressive results attained through automation.
About StellarWP
StellarWP was formed in 2021 as Liquid Web brought together many of the biggest brands in WordPress under one umbrella. The company is dedicated to enabling success for WordPress creators – big and small – through scalable, reliable solutions.
They have various WordPress plugins serving different purposes for different people.
With Kadence, a creator can realize their vision for how they want to appear on the internet with a beautiful site easily.
With The Events Calendar, event organizers can promote their events and sell tickets.
With Give, nonprofits can simplify their fundraising while minimizing their fees.
Each product in the StellarWP suite really helps people succeed online with WordPress. “We build products for people to be successful today, and we continually evaluate and grow to make sure we will help customers be successful as they continue,” says Zach Tirrell (General Manager, StellarWP), explaining the same.
The Problem They Faced
Like any company in the WordPress ecosystem, StellarWP’s customers are both organizations and people building their own sites and agencies and freelancers building sites for others.
Their support and customer success team often have to help people build their first site or help developers build hundreds of sites for others. At times, it required customizing things to fit outside-the-box scenarios.
The team has been using WPSandbox heavily for QA testing sites, customer demos, and launching quick disposable WordPress installation to use for testing since 2018. Its functionality was so critical to the company’s operations that it eventually acquired the product. However, the team soon realized that it is extremely difficult to manage, use, and refine such a system.
Complex user interface, slow loading instances, bad experience for their customers, and hampered team’s productivity were a few reasons why StellarWP wanted to switch to a better product.
How StellarWP found InstaWP?
StellarWP acquired and owned WPSandbox. They know firsthand how complicated it is to build and maintain a system like this.
While looking for a reliable alternative, Zach found InstaWP.
In fact, Zach told us – “InstaWP does it extraordinarily well, and we are glad to be customers. We eventually retired this product in favor of InstaWP! 😉”
Specific Use Cases StellarWP relies on InstaWP for
StellarWP uses our platform for testing releases before they go out, confirming bugs when customers report them, providing demos to customers, and more.
As per their General Manager, StellarWP loves instant site creation and Shared Templates features the most. The team also utilizes Sandbox (a.k.a Shared Templates), Teams, Site Tools (SSH, Map Domain, Migration), DB Editor, Code Editor, and Logs Viewer.
The Support and QA teams create an average of 12 sandbox sites from templates every day, which roughly saves both teams a little under 3 hours of setting up a brand new site for troubleshooting or verifying bug fixes.
There are, on average, over 180 customer demo sites created every day from our InstaWP templates.
Over 65,000 sandbox sites have been created since StellarWP started using InstaWP.
“At any given time, we have thousands of active sites across all of these uses.”
To quickly summarize, the team uses InstaWP for various purposes.
Building Sites for Clients: StellarWP leverages InstaWP’s instant site creation feature to swiftly build customized websites for their clients. With a vast array of templates and robust site-building tools, StellarWP ensures rapid deployment of high-quality websites tailored to their clients’ unique requirements.
Using Templates to Create New Sites: By utilizing InstaWP’s extensive template store and their prebuilt templates, StellarWP expedites the site creation process. They capitalize on pre-designed templates to accelerate the development of new sites, ensuring consistency in design and functionality.
Creating Staging Sites: InstaWP’s staging site functionality is instrumental for StellarWP in testing and refining website changes before going live. By quickly spinning up staging environments with InstaWP, StellarWP effectively conducts thorough testing, ensuring a seamless user experience upon deployment.
Building Product Demos (Sandbox) for Potential Customers: StellarWP harnesses InstaWP’s sandbox feature to create interactive product demos for potential customers. These demos allow prospects to explore StellarWP’s offerings firsthand in a risk-free environment, showcasing the value and capabilities of their products.
Creating Test Sites Quickly: InstaWP’s rapid site creation capabilities empower StellarWP to swiftly set up test sites for various purposes. Whether for troubleshooting, bug fixes, experiments, or quality assurance testing, StellarWP leverages InstaWP to expedite the deployment of test sites, facilitating efficient testing and validation processes.
As InstaWP continues to improve and enhance the platform and continues doing it so extraordinarily well, we’ll be glad to be customers.
– Zach Tirrell (General Manager, StellarWP)
How InstaWP Benefits StellarWP?
InstaWP helped the StellarWP in boosting the efficiency of StellarWP by automating demos and simplifying WordPress setup. Our tool saves them Three hours per day, which makes up around 33% of a team member’s productive day.
Easy Testing and Minimal Disruptions
InstaWP makes testing easy for StellarWP, helping them avoid website issues. With quick staging site creation, StellarWP can test changes without affecting the live site, keeping everything running smoothly.
“The ability to easily and quickly create testing sites for QA and Support, customer demos, and temporary/disposable WordPress sites is critical to our operation, and we rely on InstaWP every day across different roles and teams.”
Happy Clients, Efficient Projects
InstaWP’s simple setup helps StellarWP make clients happy faster. With InstaWP, StellarWP can build custom websites quickly and provide engaging demos, making projects run smoother and clients more satisfied.
Better Support
InstaWP offers solid support, giving StellarWP help when they need it. Fast response times and knowledgeable staff mean StellarWP can solve problems quickly, keeping their clients happy.
“InstaWP is quite a stable platform, and whenever we run into issues, the Support and Engineering team is quick to jump on it and get to a solution as quickly as possible.”
Time and Resource Savings
Using InstaWP’s templates and fast site creation, StellarWP saves time and resources. They can focus on delivering great results without spending too much time setting up sites.
Boosting Engagement and Sales
InstaWP’s demos help StellarWP attract and convert customers. By letting potential clients try their products in a safe environment, StellarWP can show off what they offer and turn interested parties into paying clients.
“We have experienced some challenges while using InstaWP, many of them not big showstoppers. We’ve always relied on the InstaWP Support and Engineering team to find a workaround or a permanent solution to our problems. The team is quite responsive to implementing tweaks and new features.“
Final Word
Integrating InstaWP into StellarWP’s operations highlights the impactful role of automation in the WordPress ecosystem. Through InstaWP’s features, StellarWP tackled challenges, streamlined operations, and improved customer experiences, marking a major step in its path to better user experience and success.
Vikas is an Engineer turned entrepreneur. He loves the WordPress ecosystem and wants to help WP developers work faster by improving their workflows. InstaWP, the WordPress developer's all-in-one toolset, is his brainchild.
