Today, I am excited to announce that BuddyBoss has been acquired and is joining the Awesome Motive family. This is an exciting new chapter for us at BuddyBoss, and for the future vision of the BuddyBoss platform.
For more than 10 years, Tom and Michael have been helping users transform their regular websites into online communities. It all started with the original BuddyBoss Theme, and over the years we have evolved into the most powerful all-in-one community & social learning platform.
We now have an amazing team of over 100+ people working together every day to help you grow your online community without limits.
As we look to the future, it became clear to Tom and Michael that the best way to unlock the next phase of BuddyBoss’s growth would be to find a new owner with a shared mission and values, as well as resources to take the company to the next level.
Syed and Awesome Motive are the perfect fit, with the experience and guidance that we need to ensure BuddyBoss can achieve its long term vision.
Who is Awesome Motive?
Awesome Motive is a fully bootstrapped software company, founded by Syed Balkhi, with a single mission: help small businesses grow and compete with the big guys. What started as a WordPress blog, WPBeginner soon became a journey into building, investing and acquiring WordPress plugins + SaaS products to fulfill this mission.
They are a team behind some of the most popular plugins in the WordPress ecosystem such as:
- OptinMonster – Conversion optimization software that helps you convert abandoning visitors into subscribers and customers.
- WPForms – A beginner friendly WordPress form builder.
- MonsterInsights – The most popular WordPress Analytics plugin that helps you grow your business with confidence.
- AIOSEO – the original WordPress SEO plugin to help you get more traffic.
- WP Mail SMTP – the #1 plugin that helps improve your WordPress email deliverability.
- Duplicator – top WordPress backup and migration plugin.
Beyond that, they have also invested through the WPBeginner Growth Fund:
- MemberPress – The all-in-one membership plugin for WordPress
- Uncanny Automator – Builds automations between your WordPress plugins
- Uncanny Owl – The leader in elearning add-on plugins for LearnDash
- WishList Member – Content protection and membership solution
- WCVendors – the best multi-vendor marketplace solution for WooCommerce
- GrooveHQ – top-rated customer support and live chat software.
Collectively, Awesome Motive have plugins and software that are used on more than 25 million websites; and many of them also integrate with BuddyBoss.
While this is a new ownership, we’ve had relationships with a lot of their teams, and Syed has known Tom and Michael for several years.
One of the key elements for Tom and Michael was to find a new owner who understood the core values at BuddyBoss, how we help our customers and the impact we provide. Syed was a clear choice because he already knew BuddyBoss and the value of communities.
In addition to that, we wanted stability, for now and the future – and Syed’s approach to buying businesses with a very long-term mindset means we’ve got the commitment and the resources of Awesome Motive to ensure we’re always driving forward. Read about Awesome Motive background story here.
What changes at BuddyBoss?
The truth is, very little is changing at BuddyBoss.
Ahead of the acquisition, I had the opportunity to meet with Syed at WordCamp Europe, and we discussed the history and future of BuddyBoss for several hours. By the end of our meeting, I walked away feeling very excited about the future of this partnership.
With the exception of Tom and Michael, the entire team will continue in their current roles, and I will continue leading BuddyBoss in the General Manager role.
Our vision and product roadmap moves ahead as planned, and the leadership team around me will help carry forward BuddyBoss. From now on though, we’ll have the added support, resources and insights from Awesome Motive and their companies to help us achieve our goals.
We will also have the ability to work closely with other AM / WPBeginner growth fund companies and improve upon our integrations, fill the gaps of any missing functionality and improve the support experience between all brands.
Essentially, our commitment to you remains the same. We want to continue building the best community and social learning platform on WordPress!
With the help of Awesome Motive, we are going to expand the platform and reach even more WordPress users to launch online communities which means, you can continue to expect more exciting new features from the best online community platform that you’ve come to love.
What about Rapyd?
Tom and Michael will continue working on Rapyd web hosting platform as they enter the next chapter of their lives.
And most importantly, we still recommend Rapyd as the fastest managed server provider to host your BuddyBoss Web and App. Our two teams will continue to collaborate to ensure you have the best community hosting platform for WordPress.
Looking Ahead
The entire team and I are incredibly excited about this new chapter and the opportunity it brings to further our mission of building thriving online communities.
By joining forces with Awesome Motive, we can empower you with the tools and resources to take your community to new heights. This year we’ve got so much planned that the new resources as part of the Awesome Motive network will ensure we hit these goals and further refine our vision for the future of BuddyBoss Web and App. Just in the next few months we’re releasing Activity Polls, along with Social Login and Offloading Capabilities. In addition to this, we’ll be releasing an Access Controls component for Platform, enabling you to integrate with membership plugins whilst controlling user access all in one single location.
And for the BuddyBoss App, we’re about to release the App Header customisations, native Tutor LMS integration and then Custom Post Type support, in addition to all our platform features.
Our goal is to make BuddyBoss the best all-in-one community platform for WordPress, with a native app to support your community and users anytime, anywhere. This new partnership allows us to drive forward this vision, with the resources and backing to accelerate this progress, ensuring you get high quality features released month after month.
It’s fair to say, I’m super excited about this change, and I hope you are too.
I want to finish this by sending a huge thank you to Michael and Tom for building an incredible company that is truly making a real difference in many people’s lives. They leave behind a legacy of culture and customer-first approach, and we wish them all the best in Rapyd.
And of course, I want to say a huge thank you to YOU, the users of BuddyBoss.
Thank you for your continued support and being the best part of this journey with us. I can’t wait to see what we’ll achieve together in the future.
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Amazing news! Will this affect in anyway customers using the lifetime offer?
No change at all Marco – all active subscriptions and lifetime licenses are, and will remain unaffected.
Awesome!
My conspiracy brain says hopefully this isnt part of a greater WEF amalgamation agenda/motive!
The BB team is amazing!
Let’s hope this brings deeper Thrive themes integration!!! But at the same time, the pricing structure of their brands tends to suck and lock our LTD holders from updates by calling them “add-ons” 🙁
It’s early days, but we’ll definitely be looking at what’s possible in the future between us, and the other AM Brands.
This all sounds progressive, I hope this will support the team to progress roadmap items quicker in the future. My only concern is changes or significant cost increases. Or restrictions on the number of users/tiered pricing being introduced based on the number of users accessing the app etc. Fingers crossed this will be great step forward 🙂
I appreciate the feedback Lee. Rest assured, we have no plans to place restrictions at a user/installs level. We already have Platform vs Platform Pro in terms of component/feature restrictions, and practice will continue as we add more functionality – but as a Platform Pro user, you have all the social features without restrictions.
It’s always sad to see change in leadership and are grateful to still have Graham on the team.
I hope the awesome support provided by the Buddyboss team remains. I have found the other software companies in their portfolio to have less than stellar customer service. Thank you to the former owners and hoping for the best.
Thanks for commenting CK; I’m really proud of what our support team have achieved, especially over the last 18 months. There are no plans to change the team, only how we can make the experience even better.
That’s great news! Congratulations to Michael, Tom, Graham, and the rest of the BB Team! I’m looking forward to seeing where things progress from here.
Thank you! BuddyBoss is in good hands under Graham’s leadership 🙂
Sounds great. Hope it will lead to acceleration of BB platform development!
This post came at just the right time for me Your words have provided me with much-needed motivation and inspiration Thank you