CalderaWP this month announced Caldera Labs, a new partnership that combines the efforts of form building tool Caldera Forms and A/B testing tool Ingot.
Although each product will maintain its independent brand under the Caldera Labs umbrella, the two teams will be moving forward as one company to create a more streamlined workflow. The consolidation combines the efforts of Caldera Forms’ founder David Cramer, Ingot’s business manager Christie Chirinos, and Josh Pollock — who is both a developer at Caldera and the founder of Ingot.
“Having two teams and two companies was a good way to start as we tested out what worked and didn’t work. But, moving forward as we have seen everyone’s strengths and weaknesses, we will move forward as one company,” Pollock said.
The change will happen over the next couple weeks but won’t be noticeable to customers. Caldera Labs will also include the WordPress training currently offered on Pollock’s website. By bringing all these products together in one place, the team can focus on what they’re creating instead of figuring out how to run two separate businesses. Under the new model, Cramer and Pollock will focus on product development while Chirinos will direct her efforts towards managing the business.
“It’s really about making it easier and more efficient for us to manage all of this. I’m not sure that customers care that we are closing some bank accounts and getting rid of other redundancies. What they care about is that we keep making cool stuff. The more efficient our business is the more cool stuff we can make,” Pollock said. “Really by bringing in someone who can manage the business better than I ever could, we’re freeing up a ton of my time to do more development, which is awesome.”
Not only is the Caldera team restructuring their business model, but the company itself appears to be amidst a growth spurt, with the recent release of several new products: a new ConvertKit add-on, an open-source ConvertKit API, and a new Caldera Forms bundle option.
The bundle options for Caldera Forms includes new add-ons for accepting payments, login, registration, front-end editing, mailing list building, and more. If you are already a Caldera Forms customer, you will get the option of a pro-rated upgrade to a bundle. So if you’re already paying $120 for your Caldera service, you can get a discount of $120 off any bundle, all of which start at $139. Note that there is also a free blogger bundle available, with limited functionality.
Two of the newest add-ons include ConvertKit and Aweber. These tools help you take your email marketing game to the next level by allowing you to send automated emails to clients, create mailing list sign ups, pop-ups, and more.
CalderaWP also released the ConvertKit API client, which you can download here.
“When developing our new ConvertKit add-on, I could not find any PHP SDK or really much of anything pre-built to work with the ConvertKit API version 3. So, I made an API client,” Pollock said in the announcement.
Pollock is excited to continue to release exciting products under the new Caldera Labs format. Especially with the help of his partners.
“People want to know how I do all of this. The answer is getting awesome people to help,” he said.
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