Astra, the makers of the worlds hottest WordPress templates, introduced it’s investing in LatePoint, one of the vital superior on-line reserving options and within the course of is advancing WordPress because the go-to platform for companies.
This transfer brings the highly effective scheduling, reserving and fee administration capabilities of LatePoint to all customers, particularly those that use Astra.
What Is LatePoint?
LatePoint is a plugin that manages the whole on-line reserving and appointment scheduling lifecycle.
It integrates with six completely different fee gateways:
- Braintree
- Paystack
- PayPal
- Razorpay
- Sq.
- Stripe
LatePoint additionally automates widespread workflow actions like sending electronic mail and SMS reminders, synchronizing with third celebration calendars and even robotically creating Zoom conferences.
LatePoint helps signups through Fb and Google and integrates with Twilio. Companies may even monitor efficiency within the admin dashboard the place all of the capabilities are viewable.
Various companies similar to on-line service suppliers to hair salons can use LatePoint to guide appointments, schedule them, ship reminders and gather funds in a seamless method from one plugin.
The Astra announcement additionally lists these capabilities:
“Shopper database: Maintains a complete shopper database, offering fast entry to shopper histories, preferences, and speak to data for personalised service.
Customizable reserving types: Tailor reserving types to assemble particular data from purchasers, guaranteeing that appointments are booked with all obligatory particulars.”
LatePoint Is Half Of A Bigger Technique
The nearer one appears at what Astra has quietly been doing the clearer it turns into that they’re making a platform inside a platform that permits small companies to automate numerous processes to be able to compete on the identical stage as a lot bigger organizations.
For instance, Astra is behind one other WordPress plugin referred to as SureTriggers.
What SureTriggers does is make it straightforward for small companies to create event-driven automations between WordPress plugins in addition to with third celebration SaaS.
SureTriggers presents historical past logs that present what the automations did between the linked plugins and third celebration SaaS to be able to troubleshoot or maintain monitor of what’s happening.
It helps office collaboration for creating automated workflows, helps customized webhooks and APIs.
SureTriggers even presents the power to delay an motion, conditional logic and filters that assist create complicated automations.
That is how SureTriggers describes what it does:
“Simply switch information between your favorite apps and providers like Mailchimp, Gmail, HubSpot, and so on. No matter you’ll want to join, SureTriggers has you coated.
SureTriggers seamlessly integrates with in style WordPress plugins like Gravity Types, WooCommerce, Elementor, CartFlows, and plenty of extra.
Create multi-step automations that seamlessly execute a sequence of various duties robotically after a selected occasion happens, all custom-made by you.”
Including the highly effective LatePoint scheduling and appointment capabilities into that blend turns WordPress right into a ridiculously succesful enterprise platform that makes a small enterprise carry out at a stage far increased than what was succesful as not too long ago as 5 years in the past with out spending a big sum of money.
And it accomplishes all of this at a worth that’s in attain of any small enterprise.
Astra Integrates WordPress With Enterprise
Of particular curiosity is how LatePoint will seamlessly combine with Astra’s SureCart, making Astra a robust competitor to WooCommerce. Astra additionally presents Spectra, their straightforward to make use of web page builder that helps each the basic WordPress editor and the newer Gutenberg blocks.
Taken collectively, what Astra is doing is making WordPress carry out like a devoted enterprise CMS however with all the advantages of the open supply WordPress ecosystem.
Astra has quietly grow to be a pacesetter in extending the capabilities of WordPress in a method that more and more makes WordPress a beautiful selection for small companies.
Their web site templates are utilized by over 2.5 million web sites worldwide, which provides them an enormous pool of potential customers or recommenders of LatePoint.
However what this funding makes clear is that Astra is rapidly turning into the go-to answer for WordPress-based companies in addition to creating viable options to personal closed-source content material administration programs.
The Astra announcement makes no secret of their ambition to make WordPress a robust selection for companies:
“We’re excited to share information, implement our concepts, deploy Brainstorm Drive processes and work intently with the LatePoint workforce.
We are able to’t wait to convey an enterprise-grade, strong, fashionable, and dependable appointment and reserving answer to the small companies and bigger WordPress group.
One factor that I can’t stress sufficient is we’re a mission pushed group. Every thing we do is designed to unlock the ability of the web for small companies.”
Tight Integration With Astra Merchandise
One other fascinating issue to contemplate is that Astra is promising tighter integration between their templates and all the opposite plugins they provide, such because the WooCommerce different SureCart and SureTriggers.
SureTriggers is an fascinating piece of the Astra suite of enterprise associated plugins. SureTriggers allows WordPress customers to combine another instrument or plugin to be able to create an automatic workflow.
It really works by connecting WordPress to a whole lot of SaaS apps, automates WordPress plugins to allow them to work collectively and may even join your completely different web sites and providers in order that numerous duties are automated.
One-Time Cost Pricing Supplied For A Restricted Time
Astra introduced that they are going to be providing a lifetime fee deal that gives all the advantages of LatePoint with a single-payment lifetime license.
Astra LatePoint Funding
I hadn’t heard of LatePoint till studying of Astra’s funding in it. After researching what Astra has been doing evidently they’ve been pursuing a method for making WordPress a robust selection for companies.
Featured picture by Shutterstock/NaMong Productions92
