The Membership Machine Show – Jonathan Denwood and Spencer Forman – for advice, tips, and insight on planning, running, and growing a successful membership website, plus what is the best technology solutions from WordPress and SaaS, plus interviews with membership industry experts.
This Week Show’s Sponsors
Sensei LMS: Sensei LMS
BlogVault: BlogVault
LifterLMS: LifterLMS
LaunchFlows: LaunchFlows .
Key Measuring Points
A – Ease of use
B – Functionality | Quizzes | Surveys | Flashcards
C – Usability | UX design
D – Branching logic builder
E – Price
#1 – WP Quiz Pro – https://mythemeshop.com/plugins/wordpress-quiz/
Price $57 per year multiple websites
#2 -.Smart Quiz Builder – https://smartquizbuilder.com/
Prices are $69 per year for one website license.
#3 – Quiz and Survey Master – https://quizandsurveymaster.com/pricing/
Prices are $129 per year for one website license.
#4 – Quiz Cat – https://fatcatapps.com/quizcat/
Prices are $49 per year for one website license.
#5 – ARI Stream Quiz Pro – http://wp-quiz.ari-soft.com/#pricing
Prices are $25 per year website license.
#6 – Thrive Quiz Builder
Prices are $97 per year website license.
#7 -. Formidable Forms – https://formidableforms.com/pricing
Prices $199 per year website license
#8 – SaaS Alternatives
A – Typeform – https://www.typeform.com/pricing/
Prices Basic $25 per month one website
B – Wufoo – https://www.wufoo.com
Prices Starter $14 per month for one website
C – interact – https://www.tryinteract.com/
Prices Pro $53 per month one website
D – ProProfs – https://www.proprofs.com/
Prices Business $40 per month one website
E – Outgrow – https://outgrow.co/
Prices Business $14 per month one website
Episode Transcript
[00:00:03.850] – Introduction
Welcome to the Membership Machine show, talking you through your membership website from initial idea all the way to finished product. Here’s your host, Jonathan Denwood.
[00:00:16.690] – Jonathan Denwood
Welcome back, folks to the Membership Machine show. This is episode ten. This is our first show for 2023. I don’t know where 2022 went, but it went somewhere. I’ve got my very patient co host with me, Spence. So Spence, happy New Year and would you like to introduce yourself to some views quickly?
[00:00:41.430] – Spencer Forman
It’s Spence from spencerforman.com, the hub of all my other WordPress and freelance and business activity. And I want to welcome you. Very happy New Year. I feel like I need to reach out and tickle you or something because you’re very subdued today. Normally you’re much more much friskier, but maybe you just need a little coffee this morning.
[00:01:03.610] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve had a lot of coffee already. Ridiculous about a coffee. In this show we’re going to be discussing the best quiz plugins for WordPress and SAS services a bit. So it’s going to be a mixture. We got some great things to say about this. Also, if you got any questions about membership websites about the right plugin, you can join us live around 830 Pacific Standard Time. You can do that by going to the WP Tonic YouTube channel or join in the Membership Machine shows Facebook Group and the show is shown on their live and you can ask us any questions on those two platforms. So, Spencer, I didn’t really know how to approach this because obviously we support Lifter, LMS and Learn and they have their own quiz in built. But what I thought the best way to start this is just to give a broad outline of some of the functionality that you think any of these solutions you should be looking for. So have you got any insights on a more kind of global before we get into the specifics of how somebody could quantify the best solution for them, some of the key things they should be looking for?
[00:02:52.710] – Spencer Forman
Of course, I mean, I would say the number one thing is restraint. So quiz building goes into the same column as social networking. Over the many years of helping people who are doing social network features now buddy Boss or through Facebook or a third party Connective, I have to ask them why. It’s kind of like the five whys? Why do you want to do this? Why do you want to take on babysitting? Why do you want whatever? And when it comes to quizzes and things of that nature, I really think people need to say why? And there’s really maybe one, perhaps two reasons that somebody needs to offer quizzes. Number one is certification. That is to say, we’ve had many clients who come to us that have a really, really profitable online model where they’ve taken something for a group of people. Maybe they are people who drive forklifts or maybe they are people who are certified truck drivers. Or maybe there’s somebody who has, like, a bookkeeper or something where the company offering the training is saying to a company who has employees, if you send them to our online site, we can give them the education, make them take a quiz and prove that they know the stuff to hand out certificates.
[00:04:13.180] – Spencer Forman
Which saves you a fortune in aggravation and a fortune in insurance, because by having a certification program that these people know how to drive forklifts, the insurance company is happy to give a discount. The second type of situation is for gamification purposes. It’s still true, although a bit of a gimmick, that people who think at the end of the course or at the end of each lesson, there’s going to be a test. Just like being in junior high school again, right? It’s like there’s going to be a test on this, they’re going to listen, they’re going to pay attention more than if they can just skim through it otherwise. And I think that adds a perception of value. If you don’t have a yes to either of the two, why are you doing it then? Leave the quizzes out. Because, quite frankly, in today’s world, people like to go through your content in whatever way they see fit, which also includes the sequential nature of a lot of stuff, right? Like some courses force you drip by drip to get stuff and then you can’t go backwards. That’s arguably part of this conversation.
[00:05:18.710] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, thanks for that. I’ve kind of thought about six key areas that I think you can measure these different plugin solutions and that’s ease of use. Functionality, fundamentally what each solution can do. Usability. People would say functionality and usability are mixed and they would be correct about that. But I think having a modern UX design and being easy to make a quiz and for people, the look of the quiz is important. Branching, logic and price. So they were some of the key elements that I think you should have in your mind when you’re looking at one of these solutions. Before we go into the meat and potato of the different solutions, we need to go for a break and I’ve got a couple of messages from our key sponsors. We will be back in a few moments.
[00:06:29.860] – Spencer Forman
Folks, are you looking for ways to make your content more engaging? Sensei LMS by Automatic is the original WordPress solution for creating and selling online courses. Sensei’s new interactive block can be added to any WordPress page or post. For example, interactive videos let you pause videos and display quizzes, lead generation forms, surveys and more for a 20% off discount for the tribe, just use the code Wptonic all one Word when checking out and give Sensei a try. Today.
[00:07:03.510] – Jonathan Denwood
The importance of backing up your WordPress website cannot be emphasized enough. We use Blog Vault to help us do this on a daily basis with free staging, migrations and on the pro plans, malware scanning and auto fix. Blogvolt is the professional’s choice when managing just one website or many. Go to blogvolt.com and see for yourself. You seriously won’t find a better, more complete solution. That’s blogvolt.com. Blogvolt.com. We’re coming back. I’d like to point out that you can get some special deals from some of the sponsors, plus a created list of different solutions, plugins and other solutions that if you’re building your membership website on WordPress, you will find really useful. Instead of having to spend hours look scouring the internet, they’re all in one place. To get all these goodies, all you have to do is go over to WP Tonicdeals and they’re all there. So this goes straight in it. I did a bit of research, Spence. I’m not saying these are in no particular order. I just took what other people were promoting the most online and on YouTube and I spent a couple of hours doing a dive because I haven’t utilized all these solutions myself.
[00:08:38.790] – Jonathan Denwood
So let’s start off with W. And I’ve gone for the pro versions of everything. Some of these solutions have a really good free solution to some extent, but I’ve gone for all the lowest price pro level of all these solutions because I thought that would be the fairest Spencer. So let’s start off with double WP quiz pro. I don’t know if you’ve got any experience with this and what your initial views are on it, but over to you.
[00:09:16.370] – Spencer Forman
Well, I think it’s really going back to the comment you made about a lot of the quiz features are built into a learning management system. I think it’s important to realize that this is like a different situation to use this plugin. Right. I can’t imagine if you used any of the three or four LMS that lead the pack like we spoke of last week. I mean, obviously learn, lifter, tutor, apprentice, pro and so forth. Like if you got that you’ve already got quizzes built in, you’re not going to use this plug in or another plug in. This is for somebody who has like a unique situation. Maybe you’re doing a webinar, maybe you’re doing a corporate event, maybe you’re doing something. So the thing that this reminds me of are those fun little gimmicks that we used to have in the past where you need a widget to engage people, right? So what kind of personality do you have, Jonathan? How many Oscar nominated movies have you seen? And I think if you pair this together with something like marketing automation, it’s a lead baggage. This product has the graphics capability, the widgetized capability, it has advanced statistics.
[00:10:29.850] – Jonathan Denwood
It.
[00:10:30.250] – Spencer Forman
Works with any theme agnostically, and there’s pay to play. Like if you go through their feature list, this is a solid, solid offering. And so it goes back to your moment ago conversation, even integration with some of the I’m not saying you’d use this, but with your MailChimp or get response. You can go through another method like we talked about with WP Fusion. But the idea is this is a pretty comprehensive solution for building some kind of engaging, fun content to draw people into your list instead of the typical I’ll give you a PDF and so for $57 for unlimited sites. Unlimited.
[00:11:11.190] – Jonathan Denwood
It’s interesting.
[00:11:12.090] – Spencer Forman
I think they have a sale going on now it’s just $57 for the single product.
[00:11:16.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, that’s what I’ve got.
[00:11:18.590] – Spencer Forman
Versus 199. I’m confused by their yeah, always a little bit. I’m confused by their home page sales thing because it says membership access all themes and plugins. I think that’s the difference. So if you just get the product itself and you don’t need the themes and all the plugins, 57 or you get unlimited sites for, I guess 199 and I don’t know, honestly, is that a year? They need to check that part.
[00:11:44.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, they do. My thoughts about this is the only thing it does a lot for the price, like I say. But the thing is, if you’re really serious about courses, you’re going to use a learning management system like Lifter Learn Dash. But the other thing is, I know, like you mentioned, you can use something like WP version, but in the plugin it connects to a couple of email services. I think the two were MailChimp.
[00:12:22.330] – Spencer Forman
Yeah, MailChimp we can get response.
[00:12:24.310] – Jonathan Denwood
It was a little bit limited there and the interface is okay, it’s very basic WordPress. What I mean is it’s not that polished in UX design, but that’s a good thing or a bad thing because you can take it too far. It totally divorced from WordPress, literally. But I think what you said is fair, that is going on.
[00:12:58.650] – Spencer Forman
But that’s by the way, I want to just point out it matters more to me in these kinds of things, what it spits out, and that that’s universal than what the back end looks like. Because in this case, again, chances are good this is to drive somebody to a lead magnet opportunity. You’re using this to engage them, to give you their email. I want to use one use case here where this kind of stuff would be perfect for it used to be possible on Facebook if you grew a large audience, whether you’re a public profile or whether you’re private, to get everybody into Yahoo, you could import all your Facebook friends into Yahoo email. There’s no way now that I’m aware of legally to get your people off of Facebook other than to ask them to do something. And for me that’s like a problem that I’m facing because I really don’t need or want any more professional friends. I would like followers, but what I want is anybody who wants to engage with me to get over to my list where I can have a meaningful interaction with them. So something like this could be quite interesting.
[00:14:02.430] – Spencer Forman
Like here’s a quiz for freelancers about ABCDE. Click here. And if you get the right answer, you get a prize. And it’s like now an encouragement and inducement.
[00:14:14.750] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. On to the next one. I’m actually interviewing the founder developer in February of this actual plug in, and it’s smart, quiz builder, very feature rich, was on appsuma that I bought into that I haven’t spent enough time with it. My only criticism is that the interface and what it produces in UX design terms could be a little bit polished. But when it comes to the actual functionality side, it offers a lot. I don’t know if you’ve looked at this, it’s been on your radar.
[00:15:08.690] – Spencer Forman
Is this you’re going to have on the ground? Yes, it’s a solid offering. It’s deeply integrated with a lot of I call them email products, not marketing automation, necessarily her history, as I appreciate the fact because we’ve talked about this before, she’s very clear. I’m Vena. I’m the co developer or co founder. And I also have another product, DAP Digital Access Pass, which is a membership plugin that’s been around for some time, as I recall. Anyway, so I like the fact it’s priced right. It’s deep integration. You know who it is. You’re back into the yogurt aisle of the supermarket, right? There are 47 different brands of yogurt and different packages and different flavors. You maybe just have to try one or two of them to see. But it’s nice to know, like, I listened to the TRO Bani story on I listened to Guy Raza’s podcast and how I built this, and I listened to the Troy Bonnie founder story that made me want to engage with Choi Bonnie as much as the fact that I usually eat FAYO yogurt. And that’s kind of the thing. I feel here that they have a solid product.
[00:16:20.250] – Spencer Forman
You know who it is, try it out, and if you have the need for their other stuff, then so much the better. But that’s the reality of what we’re reviewing here, is that there’s going to be seven, eight products that all essentially are undefinediated from everybody other than these nuanced things who made it. How does it feel?
[00:16:42.260] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think compared to some of the other ones, it’s very feature rich. It does have a branching logic builder that’s pretty cool. The price is attractive. I think the UX design side of it, back and front, could be improved functionality. It’s got a lot of functionality. Easy use. I think it’s pretty easy to use as any of them. So it’s got some real strengths and it’s got a couple of weaknesses. But overall, it’s a solid product from a solid team. She’s a serious person.
[00:17:23.840] – Spencer Forman
I mean, when you look at the features, which are nice, like I’ve talked about already today, lead data, right? So it scores the leads that come in. And I don’t mean scoring like the quiz number, but like, who’s better? Lead or not, they have statistics, if that’s useful. And then there’s also like some graphic elements, but they all ultimately are in a funnel arrangement. Now this is unusual to me, but as I was suggesting, I see this as part of a larger sales funnel onboarding value ladder proposition. I find it hard to believe, unless somebody was in the educational space that they’re going to need to do infinite numbers of these other than for onboarding. Because once you have enough data about quizzes, it seems to me like there’s going to have to be the educational part too, right? So getting in people is one thing, but once they’re in, you kind of need the LMS to teach people stuff and then why not weave those into the actual courses? So maybe it works in conjunction with something that way because it does give you a lot of interesting data. Back to the main point, though.
[00:18:29.010] – Spencer Forman
Nobody needs and wants a 747. So what happens is there’s 30 features, I just need that one and that’s what you end up buying the product for. And maybe the rest you just ignore.
[00:18:40.310] – Jonathan Denwood
Onto another really popular and is on all the review lists that if you do a search on this comes up, it’s Quiz Survey Master. I got the impression that it’s very similar to WP Quiz in what it offers and who might be interested. What’s your thoughts on this one?
[00:19:07.550] – Spencer Forman
I think there’s a slight difference between quizzes exams and surveys, if you ask me. Right. So if anything, I would lean heavily on the S of the QSM because we talked a couple of weeks ago the difference between booking and events, it’s different. A booking is like a fixed, tangible thing, like a hotel room where an event is everybody come to the concert kind of a thing. And so I think this is one where if you were really needing a survey, this like survey monkey, I don’t know if that’s on our list. Maybe that’s the next one coming up.
[00:19:48.410] – Jonathan Denwood
I was in two minds to add that to the SAS element of this show because it’s surveys, but maybe I should have done because they are separate, but they are very you are thanks for pointing that out.
[00:20:03.730] – Spencer Forman
It doesn’t mean the other feature doesn’t exist. It does an amazing job. But I’m saying, like, maybe that’s a differentiator for this product versus another is on the pricing. It’s expensive. I mean, it’s more than the others. It looks really cool, but it’s not $39. You’re starting at $129. So for basic.
[00:20:26.010] – Jonathan Denwood
But the UX design and that to my mind is more modern. But you are totally correct. It’s a lot more money. You’re just going to have to look at all these and I totally agree with Spencer. I think you’re going to be looking at this if you’re looking at some quiz functionality, but it’s more the survey side of it.
[00:20:58.530] – Spencer Forman
It’s not so much that it doesn’t exist. I’m saying, like, if you needed a quiz builder, look at the $39 product. If you needed a survey builder, compare it against other survey products because I think that’s where you’re paying for a different like a Tiffany box instead of going to costco for an engagement ring.
[00:21:21.130] – Jonathan Denwood
I think it was quite interesting. This go to the next one. I was going to say extreme, but that’d be slightly inappropriate, but very different solution in some ways. Hopefully I’m going to make some sense here. I’m not even sure myself. Quiz Cat. I’m going to rely on.
[00:21:41.550] – Spencer Forman
Are we talking about fat cat apps?
[00:21:43.770] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes.
[00:21:44.640] – Spencer Forman
Okay.
[00:21:46.290] – Jonathan Denwood
In this particular one, it’s called Quiz Cat. It’s got more focus, it’s more simplistic, but they’ve got a track record. And the founder I’ve interviewed the founder of this, he’s a good businessman. And they make some well focused, easy to use, well priced micro plug in offerings, don’t they? Am I on the right track here?
[00:22:24.190] – Spencer Forman
When you go to the pricing page and you look at the features, you can see that they’re specifically focused on. The thing that I feel like this is the appropriate tool to use the elite and business focus on the fact besides social share and personality tests and quiz colors, you can do Facebook pixel integration, weighted quizzes, grow your email list, spreadsheet, export analytics. This is a tool that it’s priced fairly, especially like the business level, because I don’t think there’s no difference. This is what’s interesting, too. I like this, to be honest. Unlimited sites versus three sites, priority email versus regular email for another $70. I think it’d be just fine if you went with the business and got used to using it. That’s a pretty fair deal. It’s like 20 something bucks a site for growing a list. By having clever personality quizzes of like, what kind of freelancer are you? Or whatever your business model is, it leads into the same result. So there is a demo on this one. I think the QSM has a demo. I think any company that doesn’t have a demo is just doing a disservice. Because again, one of my relationships is with Insta, WP VicAS.
[00:23:41.970] – Spencer Forman
There’s so many ways you can just set up a demo or your product if you got a WordPress based site, like you’re killing people if you don’t, because how else are they going to know whether it feels good? So I like that there’s a demo.
[00:23:55.210] – Jonathan Denwood
They’ve been going for a few years. He had a popular podcast, but he stopped doing that. But him and his team have been around a long time and he knows.
[00:24:08.020] – Spencer Forman
I’ve got Dave Hamburger, right?
[00:24:11.860] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, hamburger.
[00:24:13.060] – Spencer Forman
Again, he’s got his team and Ryan and Andrew, he’s got his whole Gavin. The fact that the team is there is very helpful.
[00:24:21.230] – Jonathan Denwood
They know what they’re doing and he’s a decent guy. I’ve done some business with him. He’s a decent guy and he knows and his team know what they’re doing. So I’ve got no hesitantate if it’s the right solution. It’s a bit similar to Smart quiz builder I’ve got no problem about. Because before we go for a break, I think that’s the other thing you got to keep in mind, which a lot of non just website owners and I’m not being patronizing here. Rather than developer types in power implementers. I also think having a track record and choosing solutions have a track record in a history and have about US page and you know, who’s behind their history is important in a way. Would you agree with that?
[00:25:19.270] – Spencer Forman
Yeah. An added benefit, it’s a requirement in my view. We do this with all our products and our clients, the 30 day minimum, no questions asked, refund, they have a 60 day right on the About US page, so they’re hitting all the right buttons, in my view, to build credibility and trust and make this a no brainer. They have several products that are kind of related to the same topic, right. Landing page. Cat opt in. Cat easy pricing table. Cat should be pixel. Cat they left the cat off the table, so I’m not sure why. And Quiz Cat, well, it’s a suite of tools for somebody who’s doing exactly what we’re talking about, which is trying to get people from the public into your list, as they should. And then from that standpoint, if you know that you can buy any or all their products, know who made it, ask questions, put the face and get a refund if it’s a drag.
[00:26:12.150] – Jonathan Denwood
The other thing I like the way he’s done this is they’re micro, I call them micro plugin solutions. So him and his team have never attempted to build an all embracing WordPress Swiss army knife solution with a quasog walled garden around it, which some other people have gone down that path. And I’m not having a go. At them. But it doesn’t really appeal to me. Because to me, if you’re going to go down that route, you might as well just go down the SAS route.
[00:26:51.810] – Spencer Forman
We’ve talked about the platform versus feature and I think they rightfully are sticking in their lane. These products are very similar, lightweight, the interface is simple and I’m going to not pick a fight here, but I’m going to use a comparative okay. News recently of another utility plug in, like one of the Duplicator plugins just got bought out by the big company with a history of doing naughty black cat in your face, change the price, blah, blah, blah. In a world where you have a choice, it’s my opinion that you should always buy from the team of individuals or group of individuals who are sweating it out one on one instead of buying it from the corporate overlord that’s going to try to black hat you into upsells and all the other stuff and is saying one thing and doing another. I really appreciate the transparency here and it’s unfortunate every time one of those decent utility plugins instead of being folded into Core, gets sucked up into the cloud of that scenario. And so this is a company I would definitely high five anybody to try out the stuff on those reasons alone, so forth.
[00:28:06.720] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s great. We’re going to go for our middle break, folks. We got some messages from some of our sponsors. We’ll be back in a few moments, folks.
[00:28:16.990] – Spencer Forman
Hey, it’s Benz from Launchflows.com. If you’ve been looking for a fast and easy way to create powerful sales funnels on WordPress, then look no further than Launch flows. In just minutes, you can easily create instant registration upsells, down sells, order bumps, one click checkouts, one time offers custom thank you pages. And best of all, no coding is required. For as little as $50 per year, you can own and control your entire sales funnel machine with Launch flows. Get your copy today. This podcast episode is brought to you by Lifter LMS, the leading learning management system solution for WordPress. If you or your client are creating any kind of online course, training based membership website, or any type of elearning project, lifter LMS is the most secure, stable, well supported solution on the market. Go to Lifterlms.com and save 20% at checkout with Coupon code podcast 20. That’s podcast 20. Enjoy the rest of your show.
[00:29:27.750] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re coming back. We’ve had a bit of a dive in the world of quiz plugins. I just want to point out yeah, we got some more. I just want to point out, if you’re looking for WordPress to build your membership elearning business on, it’s a great decision, but you need a quality host provider that specializes in membership community websites. Have a look at WP Tonic. Our hosting plans are great value. We offer a suite of plugins, all designed. They’re the best of breed, and they’re there to help you, plus ongoing support knowledge and a number of other features as part of our hosting packages. To go over there to find out more, go over to WP Tonic. We love you to become part of the tribe. So on we go to our journey. Another really popular solution that’s on all the WordPress quiz lists when you do a Google search is but I haven’t got much knowledge of it, is Ari Stream Quiz Pro. What’s your thoughts about this one?
[00:30:47.950] – Spencer Forman
It’s got a very competitive, inexpensive yeah, very $17. Well, first of all, basic looks free, personal $17, developer 25, and that’s lifetime access. Now, this is an interesting conversation because I want to talk about like, how that works into somebody’s lifestyle business model. Expectations are set unrealistically, oftentimes in WordPress over what you should get for $39 a year in the real world. If Jonathan and I went out to lunch, which we did, by the way, there’s a picture proving it. We were actually together in the same room twice. I would buy lunch or you would buy lunch and we wouldn’t be thinking like, oh, that’s a bad investment. It’s like you got a lot out of that relationship seeing somebody in person and it was a good lunch and that is satisfied. But in the WordPress world, for some reason, people previously have been conditioned to think $39 versus $42. I got to think about this all weekend. Well, go over to the other side of the table in terms of what you expect when somebody’s upfront and says, look, it’s $25, but you’re never going to hear from me again. It actually sounds pretty good because $25 is really low, but it’s only a couple of bucks less than the annual fee.
[00:32:14.610] – Spencer Forman
The downside for the developers, of course, is that’s a one shot deal and so they can’t support it. They can’t really be around for people, but they can produce maybe like really good stuff and people can get throwaway value. Like, well, it worked well, but I didn’t like it. But it was $25. It was like having lunch with my friend. Who cares? So this is the first product that we’ve talked about that goes onto that side of the table. It’s like disposable mindset, but because they have a demo and their website is very professional, I think it’s fair. I have no clue who develops this, to be honest.
[00:32:51.210] – Jonathan Denwood
This is the problem. It is the same thing you can say about your Quiz Pro, I think, and Quiz Survey Master. I might be wrong there, but I’m just going from my memory and my age. I’m probably wrong to do that. But that’s one of the things. There is no way of finding out who these people are, is it?
[00:33:15.250] – Spencer Forman
It’s like envado stuff we talked about a few shows ago where again, I think this is one case where it doesn’t make a difference if it does what it says it does in the demo and in the docs and you paid $17, you’re on your own. Too bad. You had lunch, you ate. Maybe you had a question about what’s on the menu tomorrow. We’re not giving you that information. But compare that to if you paid 39 or 79 a year and you could email and bother people. I mean, that’s essentially what you’re paying for. Which, by the way, goes to the larger picture this year, besides all the stuff that I promised from last year that I delivered this year, I am moving wholeheartedly towards the concept of my own plug in being a cloud based solution, a hosted solution, because the majority of people who pay for it fall into one of two categories. They were people who bought that Lifetime deal through appsum or otherwise who like, put it on a shelf and think it’s an NFT that somebody in the future is going to want and they never use it. Or there are people who are actually using it for whom giving them the price point and the.
[00:34:22.950] – Spencer Forman
Utility of ready to use is all the value in the world. Like, I just wanted to sell one thing in a sales funnel, and this is like, boom, I paid to rent it for a month or two. So I like the idea of WordPress changing from the way that it’s been, which is kind of nonsense, like paying plug in authors annually for support into more of a what am I actually buying?
[00:34:44.050] – Jonathan Denwood
I don’t know what you’re going to do, but I think giving options is a great giving people different options is a great idea.
[00:34:55.890] – Spencer Forman
It’s a great idea. But the pain that we’ve had and that’s where some of these really shine in the quiz thing is, WordPress has to date been you either are buying the parts at the Home Depot, or you’re buying somebody’s expertise and they’re putting together the parts like a home builder. There’s never really been, like, an off the shelf. Here’s a thing like, I just need a quiz for a funnel and I can rent it. Or I need a sales funnel. Rent it. And I think that’s something that needs to exist in our ecosystem.
[00:35:22.970] – Jonathan Denwood
Sure. I think the more solutions they are, the better. On to the next one. Five quiz Builder really a powerful tool. $97 for a year, starting off. Has a lot of functionality. Really great usability design, a very polished got branching logic as well, and ease of use, easy to use, but there are some elements to that. Before I put my all in, what’s your views of Thrive Quiz Builder?
[00:36:06.790] – Spencer Forman
I was hoping I didn’t see it under the tree or under my menora this year. That this would be the year that Thrive, the two companies would get together and one of them would give up the name because there’s two companies in WordPress with Thrive, and I can never figure out which product is associated with which one because they each now have multiple products.
[00:36:30.460] – Jonathan Denwood
And I think this is thrive themes.
[00:36:33.090] – Spencer Forman
This just hurts me at a marketing level, so I don’t know who the hell this is. I think this is thrive themes.
[00:36:40.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Yes, it’s Shane. And I interviewed the CEO. She’s very lovely.
[00:36:46.610] – Spencer Forman
Hannah. Hannah last show, or the show before I screwed up because I associated their product incorrectly, but I knew who they were. So this is another example. They’ve got the other products, including the LMS that I think Apprentice, as I recall. Right? It’s them. Right?
[00:37:06.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah.
[00:37:07.210] – Spencer Forman
But then there’s the one with Thrive Cart, and it’s like the sales funnel.
[00:37:12.670] – Jonathan Denwood
Is confused with this. It’s not their fault, is it?
[00:37:17.370] – Spencer Forman
It’s $97 a year. It’s fine. I’m going to go with my default answer for these guys, because this is what I said last time, and I’m going to say it again now. And I actually had this conversation with a new client we onboarded yesterday. They are sort of a pseudo agency content creator. They had a client who has all of Thrive, Architect, Thrive Themes, Thrive Apprentice, they don’t like it, but they have to use it. And I said, well, keep using it then, because once you’re in with 1ft, you’re in with both feet. And once you’re in with both feet, you might as well just stick it out, because I think you just pointed.
[00:37:55.700] – Jonathan Denwood
Out, which I was hoping you were going to point out, is this actual plug in which you can now buy individually. They change their business model because you used to have to buy all in Buffet Monthly to get all their plugins, but now they’ve changed and you can buy them individually. But the actual functionality of the Quiz plug in and what you’re getting, it offers a lot if you want that lot. But the main problem I have with it is that you got to use their page builder, you got to use Architect. And in the world of ever increasing Gutenberg, I think either you’re going to stay with Elementor, this is just my opinion you’re going to keep in the world of Alamator or Divvy. Surprising amount of people that really love Divvy.
[00:39:03.770] – Spencer Forman
Divi, by the way, is very speedy in version five. Same answer though. If you’re using Divvy, there’s now a lifeline to stick around with it. But if you don’t have an association with Divi, don’t start a bad habit right now.
[00:39:25.990] – Jonathan Denwood
I love you, but I think in the world of gutenberg, every increase in polishness it’s just a train, isn’t it? At some stage you’re going to have to decide to jump on the train because you’re just going to be wiped out otherwise, aren’t you?
[00:39:44.830] – Spencer Forman
Anybody who goes back and watches the show where we talked about the LMSs will hear me say, and I say this again sometimes, I say this all the time, the tool that you use doesn’t matter to the client. If you’re doing this for the client and they’ve got stuff that’s a legacy, stick with it. If they’ve got all the Thrive Theme company stuff or God forbid, the Thrive card stuff, don’t break it unless it gives you a benefit for changing. And in this case, this is just one more of several tools that work together. And again, they’re a small company. Honey is very progressive. She understands the problem they have. But like we talked about at the time, they can’t get themselves out of this problem easily. So maybe, I don’t know, they’re thinking like, we just stick with what we got, and for the people that stick around, we’re going to make it good for them. And that’s fine too, because wagon wheels need to be made for people with wagons.
[00:40:38.430] – Jonathan Denwood
On to the next one, which was another debate in my mind, because there’s a lot of form plugins out there and a lot of them offer kind of quiz survey functionality. Now, this particular form, you’re going to have to go to the business level, but they do offer a lot of functionality and these people have been around quite a while as well, and that’s formidable. Forms, what’s your thoughts about this? Be nice.
[00:41:19.000] – Spencer Forman
I appreciate and understand your logic. I reject your premise on its face, but not because you’re wrong or that I don’t think you’re on the right track, but rather this is like somebody who goes out and buys a ginsu knife set because they need a plastic knife to spread some cream cheese on their bagel. Like this is in no way, shape or form necessary to buy the $199. Holy cow, what the hell have I got my sympathy to? And if you were going to go that direction, I would go with Gravity Forms or Fluid Forms or something else that is just native, lightweight, other purpose plug in. I mean, Gravity Forms is the granddaddy, has every option under the sun for doing quizzes and so forth, but that’s not really what I think of using it for that’s. Like, while I’m at it, I’ve got gravity forms, and I can do this stuff. Whereas we’re talking, I think today mostly about quizzes directly. So I’m going to throw it in the dustbin from the list for anybody to consider. And I wouldn’t even recommend this, quite frankly, as the forms choice for WordPress. I mean, it is a quality product that’s been around forever, but I don’t think it’s the right choice for 99% of what people want to do.
[00:42:35.250] – Spencer Forman
We haven’t done our form show yet.
[00:42:37.170] – Jonathan Denwood
Have we got to do that next week?
[00:42:39.920] – Spencer Forman
Okay, when we do our form show, we’ll lay all the things out on the table, all the blood and guts. But like right now it’s my answer of earlier in the show. Use all of the features of this so as a forms plug in.
[00:42:55.300] – Jonathan Denwood
No way. I’m sorry.
[00:42:59.240] – Spencer Forman
You’re talking because between the two of us, I’m the one that has zero sponsorship interest in anything I say or do.
[00:43:07.760] – Jonathan Denwood
These people are never going to sponsor me because they get money from a certain individual.
[00:43:12.830] – Spencer Forman
Exactly.
[00:43:13.620] – Jonathan Denwood
They never get a sponsor. This show, I’m the kid in the Emperor’s New Clothes, the feeds you and the former host and you have said about these people, which got me into a lot of hot water.
[00:43:30.370] – Spencer Forman
I want to say, by the way, I’ve had some of our listeners, which I appreciate our viewers, you’ve said that some of them come to you for professional help, which is a great thing from this show. We’ve helped educate them. I’ve had more than a few people from our last few shows directly contact me and say, spence, it’s really refreshing how you are owned by no one and tells me what I was thinking, but didn’t know if I was on the right track. Because the truth is actually very obvious for most people when you kind of like clear out.
[00:44:04.190] – Jonathan Denwood
My resolution for two, three was to not upset so many people in the WordPress space.
[00:44:13.040] – Spencer Forman
I cannot make that promise because let’s.
[00:44:16.680] – Jonathan Denwood
Be frank about it, Spencer, they’re very easy to upset. Let’s be frank about it.
[00:44:22.440] – Spencer Forman
I think that’s as I get older, I do not seek out any trouble. But trouble finds me and I have become very good as I’m like.
[00:44:33.830] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m trying to reform my wife. Because, let’s be frank about it, Spencer, I am the top of the list on a few people’s list as a target.
[00:44:43.920] – Spencer Forman
I’d like to be right there with you. But Clint Eastwood in his later movies, plays the angry, get off my lawn, kids, old man. And I feel like to a certain extent, there has to be from us granddaddies in this business, a certain amount of clarity for the kids coming in at the bottom end who don’t know what the politics and history are. Because right now we’re in an evolutionary phase of WordPress, whether it’s from the top down or from the other makers, and even the ones I referred to, the hype is not matching the reality. And the goal of all of this is not necessarily what they’re trying to sell to people. And I think if we’re clear about it, we’re offering a very good service here. Because, again, most of what we’re talking about today are features and there’s some that are better matched for other people. But we’re not talking about any of the woo woo. It comes from so and so and therefore it must be great. That’s not necessarily true.
[00:45:33.210] – Jonathan Denwood
No, they all got strengths and weaknesses. Just the reality. Like people. People have strengths and weaknesses. I’ve got so many weak. I think I’ve got some strengths, but I’ve got a long list of weaknesses.
[00:45:45.110] – Spencer Forman
But none of the things you’re talking about, thankfully, and none of the things I’m talking about ever are at homonym attacks. We’re not talking about the individual human beings here, we’re talking about the products. And that’s fair. That’s the way it goes. Make a good product, market it the right way and you’re going to get a high five from critics like us about what’s the best math.
[00:46:07.280] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, let’s wrap it up by a quick tour of some of the SAS solutions. Because a bit like booking or calendar, utilizing a SaaS solution with a WordPress website is totally in the right circumstances, the right decision. So let’s have a quick tour. There’s a lot of them and this is extensive because we’ll be here all day and Spencer’s got better things to do and I need to get to Reno this morning.
[00:46:42.450] – Spencer Forman
I’ve got to answer all my hate mail.
[00:46:44.870] – Jonathan Denwood
There we go. So let’s have a quick tour of the SAS world. Let’s start off with type form, which has got popularity through a certain type of interface. I think they’re based in Spain. I think the company is based in Barcelona, if my memory is going right and very popular in this style of form that they really were originators off. Am I right about that? What’s your views?
[00:47:18.820] – Spencer Forman
I think you’re right on both counts. Right.
[00:47:22.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Can you say you don’t often say that. Can you say that again?
[00:47:25.700] – Spencer Forman
You’re doing much better starting on 2023, but I think this show is after 15 plus years of knowing each other, this is the incarnation of all of our stuff in a format that works because I have nothing about what you say that I disagree with necessarily. It’s different flavors. But a lot of times in the past, we’ve gone off into the trenches of unrelated. Here we’re focused on, okay, bigger company, SAS. We know who they are, we know where they’re from. Joaquim, David, Carrie, it’s all up for us to see. So that builds trust. Even a large one type form as a name has a big brand by now. I mean, they’ve been around forever. I didn’t look up their crunch based credentials, but I think they probably even have investment in it. And the point is, I would probably bookmark this for our form show because I don’t think that this really qualifies as a quiz builder. I really don’t. And so as a form builder, similar to a couple of these other ones, it’s great. But for a SaaS company, you can’t just have a one trick pony, necessarily. You kind of have to cover a lot of bases.
[00:48:31.240] – Spencer Forman
So I think that’s why they do a lot of stuff.
[00:48:35.510] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I think you’re totally right. I was in two minds about it, but there’s such a big play and a well known I think you’re going to say the similar thing to be. And I was in two minds about.
[00:48:52.330] – Spencer Forman
By the way, sorry, $187,000,000 of funding, $187,000,000.12 employees, 15 investors. Now this sort of changes my whole situation because founded I don’t know where it’s founded exactly. I got to look. But $187,000,000 for a twelve person company.
[00:49:23.010] – Jonathan Denwood
It just by applying.
[00:49:26.950] – Spencer Forman
I don’t even know where to begin with that because I’d have to do some further research. We got a Series C round. Hold on. So their seed round was $550,000 and oh, my God, they just took $135,000,000 last year. So it was founded in 2013. I don’t know what the Koolaid is that they’re drinking over in Barcelona, but this one, I don’t know what their revenue is, but they’re not a public company.
[00:50:07.010] – Jonathan Denwood
You just need to look at the speakers because they are printing money.
[00:50:11.250] – Spencer Forman
I mean, they’re not printing money, they’re printing booms of investment. I don’t know if that’s a debt or equity, but it looks like it’s an equity.
[00:50:21.590] – Jonathan Denwood
Onto the next one, which is similar. Always struggle. Basically.
[00:50:30.890] – Spencer Forman
I know the company from back in the days when I was a kid, entrepreneur, loved, love, love them. This started out the guy and a couple of partners in California. Loved his story. He sold it, loved the concept, used the product. It was revolutionary at the time. I don’t know who owns it now. Now I’m going to look it up in CrunchBase, but as a product, it was brilliant. 1516 years ago, it was like when originally 37 signals came out with Base camp. Woofu was in the same frame of mind. It was Animoto and those days, like, everything was, oh, this is so cool. I can’t believe the world I’m living in.
[00:51:08.570] – Jonathan Denwood
But right now I think it’s the same story. It’s more appropriate in a form show. One of the reasons why I added these fences is when you do a search on the Google, they come up in these lists and other things, but I don’t think so. Let’s go on to the other one, which I think sorry, I’m doing my.
[00:51:31.580] – Spencer Forman
Crunch base on these guys as correct. It’s only some private funding, like $100,000 over time. They were bought by Momentum, which is the company that owns Survey Monkey. And I remember hearing on either Andrew Warner show or maybe it was some other show, I heard about the story where the founder sold out because he had started and got his and it was a really good company and still is. But now this is a good example of, okay, same business SaaS, huge history. $100,000 of outside investment versus $187,000,000. And there’s three employees. So this makes sense to me onto.
[00:52:11.380] – Jonathan Denwood
The next one, which I think is slightly more appropriate and that’s interact. I was reasonably impressed with what they’re offering. I don’t know if they’re on you. They’ve gone on your radar at all. 50. I don’t know. These guys offers more quizzes surveys at a competitive price, like modern interface design, UX Design. Haven’t used it myself, but I think it’s a plausible on your list of solutions if you’re looking at WordPress or.
[00:52:51.540] – Spencer Forman
Combining it with Assassination 2013. No outside money. The founder is Josh Haynem, San Francisco. They have maybe four employees, maybe something like that. I don’t know anything else about them, but it sounds like it says, like, maybe 90,000 users. It sounds like they’re doing a nice little tiny company, not making a lot of squeaky noises or anything crazy because there’s no private equity, but they’re focusing on a problem. So I don’t honestly have never touched this product, never heard about it before, but I’m not scared off 187. He’s going to have to sit down after the show because he’s going to.
[00:53:38.020] – Jonathan Denwood
Have to have a rest. What’s the next one? Props profits. Really great price.
[00:53:49.790] – Spencer Forman
I’ll do a little fill in here. Crunch Base shows no private equity necessarily, but there’s a larger company because they have acquired four organizations. So they apparently look like a compilation of a business that is collecting other businesses. Founded in 2005. Samir, Bahatia, Los Angeles, west coast. And it’s just a collection, as I would see from their website, of success and conversion optimization tools that empower users to do productivity, efficiency, profitability. So it sounds like a compilation play here. I likewise am not familiar with this particular product. I’m just doing a little crunch base output. This little CrunchBase output.
[00:54:42.850] – Jonathan Denwood
Just wait a second. I apologize. That’s what you get for getting over prostate cancer and having too much coffee. So I’m going to do a countdown. Three, two, one. So Spencer, I don’t know much about these people. I think you’ve just done some research.
[00:55:01.470] – Spencer Forman
Right? I was giving people some time. This looks like an aggregation play. So this company is in Los Angeles. It doesn’t indicate that there’s any private equity, but I’m sure they have a lot of cash because they basically acquired four companies in the last couple of years and they have on their website stated policy of they want to be 100 year company, the founder and so forth. It seems well situated, the sameer bahatia to basically be putting together an aggregation of various products that are for productivity and marketing automation and other things. But the bottom line is I don’t have an opinion about the product and the way that they’ve set this up. I don’t want to say it doesn’t have any applicability here, but I feel like this is an orange in a conversation about apples.
[00:55:55.030] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah. I do understand why you’re saying this, but my view about it is that and I don’t want to come across snobbish, but I am a bit of a UX snob because I did my degree and I did my Masters in UX design, which I don’t know if you were aware of. Spence, I’ve actually got a Master.
[00:56:19.680] – Spencer Forman
I did not know that.
[00:56:20.640] – Jonathan Denwood
But I actually got a Masters in UX Design from the London School of Print and Design. So it’s got compared to some of the other not the form focus but the actual quizzes survey focus. It’s rather got old facing design. Yeah.
[00:56:47.390] – Spencer Forman
Because look at who the customers are. It’s trusted by 15 million people globally and all of those are enterprise customers. So if I’m making a guess based upon what I just saw in CrunchBase and what I see there and through the interface, it’s an aggregation of companies that have software that they’re building into a sort of de facto suite that they offer. No doubt some kind of, like, really good guaranteed support licenses for enterprises so that when they use it, their employees aren’t left out in the blue. There’s probably like a call center to pro profs. They can answer questions. If you think of something like one of the CRMs we’ve talked about like Zoho, right? It’s kind of like putting a virtual zoho together of components that other companies built into something they sell enterprise.
[00:57:34.330] – Jonathan Denwood
That’s a good way solo is going to be hopefully when they say but.
[00:57:39.920] – Spencer Forman
I’m saying like their companies.
[00:57:42.610] – Jonathan Denwood
I’ve got good news actually because that’s the elephant we didn’t talk about Solo. Hopefully they’re going to be sponsoring the show.
[00:57:49.580] – Spencer Forman
But I want to make it clear because we’re talking to people in our audience. There’s no enterprise employees in our audience. Their bosses, their overlords pick the software for the company. We’re talking about entrepreneurs or agencies or freelancers. And nobody would use this kind of a product because this is not oriented towards that. It’s oriented.
[00:58:11.310] – Jonathan Denwood
I see where you’re coming from, but the prices on to the next one outgrow. I haven’t used it. I did watch some videos, went to the website. I was quite impressed for $14, $14. Start off with, I think you’re getting quite a lot for your bunny. And my similar view to interact. Until I did this research, I don’t know much about the company. I’ve never used it with a client out Vanguard. Got any thoughts about I don’t know if these people ever been on your radar?
[00:58:56.270] – Spencer Forman
They’re not on my radar. I did the Crunch base and so they’re basically like a SAS version of the same kind of interactive tools like Calculators and Fun quizzes and so forth. Private company looks like maybe only one to three employees. It says eleven to 50, but only three of them are in LinkedIn. The founder or the contact is Ashkay Saluja. So I’m not sure where they’re based, but it says headquarters in greater New York area founders ProFaM. Matal and Randy Reyes. Again, sounds like a software as a service solution for something that maybe we found in a plug in otherwise and the pricing is reasonable. I mean, so freelancer, $14 a month, $25 a month for the next level and so forth. Goes up to like a $600 a month. But this looks like that. Of all the SAS things we talk about, this is something that’s like one of those. I’m looking for something entertaining to get a lead magnet funnel put together to bring people in. I kind of want to go back to the comment I made, which you didn’t put off, but I don’t think we should just leave this aside.
[01:00:06.130] – Spencer Forman
In a world of software, if you go to G Two to look at software, there is an entire separate universe of software. Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of companies who make the same stuff and compete with each other to enterprise will never know or think about anything that is in our world of WordPress or standalone website stuff because the people who are using it are 67 levels removed from the technology. People who are at the enterprise running the servers for the corporation. Whereas in our world that’s usually the same one or two people, right? So the people who make choices about what to use for marketing in an enterprise for this are nowhere near the people that are deciding to buy it or sell.
[01:00:57.650] – Jonathan Denwood
I’m in two worlds because I have half a dozen enterprise fortune. I’ve got two clients that Fortune 500 customers. And of that, who are you dealing.
[01:01:10.000] – Spencer Forman
With at that level? What’s the position of the person?
[01:01:13.430] – Jonathan Denwood
Well, I deal with not? Well, on a quantitatively, I do deal with board level, but on a weekly, monthly, they’re junior members of the team. But on a quarterly or six month, I have a zoom meeting with somebody on the board level, but they’re on the marketing side. Marketing.
[01:01:40.670] – Spencer Forman
And so I’m going to make a bet here because for my enterprise clients, which it’s painful to deal with, there’s a smart person at the marketing level who needs a pain solved. We come to a solution. We talk about the software. We give them choice A or B or C. The choice A is typically built into their WordPress side of things. It’s lightweight, it’s simple, it works. But then they go present it to their higher ups who then bring it to the decision makers, to the board, to the five steps, five conversations, five decisions, and nine out of ten times the person higher up tells them no. We’re going with this other thing that’s completely unrelated to all the things we talked about. Why? Because if I don’t choose that, I’m going to look stupid because somebody else told me at a cocktail party to choose this other enterprise product that’s 100 times more money and doesn’t do. But if I choose that, I’ll look like I was following the right advice versus I’m going to trust you, the person actually doing the work, to make a decision. So that’s the difference. I’m getting at it’s like we’re not going to change corporate behavior here, but corporate buying is completely different than the person who’s actually the one getting the results or using the tool.
[01:02:48.300] – Spencer Forman
And again, I don’t know anything about this product, but why would you use this if you could just buy a plug in?
[01:02:54.620] – Jonathan Denwood
So let’s finish off on the WordPress side of it. If you were that type of client that you pointed out at the beginning of this conversation that wasn’t looking to use a learning management system, it was more around marketing optimization and using quizzes to get more interactive. Everything you outline of all the WordPress plugins, would you choose it or is there a solution that I never found that you would lean more to of what we talked about in the WordPress world? Of any of these, would you choose any of them?
[01:03:37.270] – Spencer Forman
Yeah, I would say here’s how I would sum it up. Remember I talked about the whys. Okay? So first off, I would have somebody ask, why do I need the quizzes at all? And take on that burden. If it’s something that has to do with an LMS, put the LMS in, go watch our membership show or otherwise maybe learn dash, lifter, so on and so forth. Use the quiz stuff in there. Now, if you’re using for lead funnels and so forth and you want to bring people onto your site, into your CRM or otherwise, of these choices, the ones we talked about that seemed the most appealing for that purpose, I believe would be number one, which was WP Quiz. And I also thought, having talked about all the details, high five to number four, Quiz Cat with the fact that the whole team was there and they’ve got the clever stuff. I liked the kind of output of WP Quiz and it was fun. But Quiz Cat also had some clever stuff. The other ones are worth mentioning for the reasons we talked about. Go try them out. They’ve all got demos. And again, even as a nice mention to Hana and her team, but if you’re already using Thrive, just go over to Thrive Chris Builder, just get it over with because unless you escape in the gravity of their other stuff, who cares?
[01:04:54.610] – Spencer Forman
And I would definitely not recommend no offense to them, but I don’t think formidable forms of the other forms were really a fit for this. They might come like type form and so forth. They might come into our other show, even honorable mention like I wouldn’t have you just jumped.
[01:05:10.620] – Jonathan Denwood
I was going to ask you if there’s kind of sasbuy solutions. I don’t know if there’s anything on your right or that’s better than the one listed.
[01:05:19.670] – Spencer Forman
This gets to the last thing I just said, which is if you have got a customer or you are a person for yourself or your client using WordPress, you want to remove as many external dependencies as possible. We talked about this in the CRM show. There is nothing about the plugins that is lacking. So if you can choose a WordPress plugin that you own and control can be backed up, it’s in your data set. It works natively. Use that instead.
[01:05:46.800] – Jonathan Denwood
Yeah, I do agree with you. But there was I think it was before our last show, before the break, you were saying that when it came to the booking calendar, you use Calgary calendar. I always struggle, I apologize.
[01:06:02.570] – Spencer Forman
So the reason that that is true because although I actually have a meeting, one of the people who reached out to me, I’ll leave it until future conversation, was one of the people from our show who produces one of the plugins because I think they maybe took to heart what we were talking about right now. For my purposes, there was one plug in that I had mentioned that Wpcal IO. That’s not who reached out to me, who was really close to what Calendly can do, but because of all the other problems and other blah, blah blah, nothing else did the thing that Calendly does at the moment. But if should somebody, maybe even this other plugin author get that functionality sorted out as a feature, I’d be like, Bye bye calendar. And that’s the bottom line.
[01:06:44.590] – Jonathan Denwood
The bottom line there’s a big opportunity because none of the solutions there are some good solutions, some good players in the booking calendar, spicing WordPress, but none of them have totally hit the sweet spot as far as.
[01:07:02.180] – Spencer Forman
Concern too much, not enough, too many complications. I will say this. I want to say like, Spencerformant.com is my hub, but what I’ve done for all my training and my daily quick tips as part of my 2023 resolution, I went back to my daily stuff. I made a video this week about a new client I onboarded who’s a massage therapist, and I’m showing some of the things that integrated with her. I use the same simple calendar setup and the ability to just connect that one service to WordPress for just that particular minimal thing is so low friction and there’s really not a big downside to it because it’s kind of disposable. Like once somebody’s in your system and once they make a booking, if you ever pulled that out and put in a new calendar system, it’s not like you got to move the data because you already know who the users were. So for that reason, if there is something in the field of what we’re talking about, quiz builders and so forth, if you found something compelling as a SAS service, not the end of the world if it’s outside as long as the person on boards to your system and WordPress first.
[01:08:05.040] – Jonathan Denwood
Exactly.
[01:08:05.480] – Spencer Forman
But price wise, complexity wise, if it’s a plug in better, and that’s my bottom line answer, is that I can’t.
[01:08:13.200] – Jonathan Denwood
What surprised me, just to wrap it up, what surprised me in some ways there’s a lot more choice when it comes to quizzes surveys in the WordPress space than the actual booking calendar space. In some ways a lot more, yeah.
[01:08:28.360] – Spencer Forman
Because this is an older remember like we were talking about?
[01:08:30.630] – Jonathan Denwood
Woofu.
[01:08:31.340] – Spencer Forman
This is going back to 20 13, 20, 14, 20, 15, 20 16 I was involved in WordPress since 2006, but I remember the golden age when the website started to get SAS services and there was funding. There was a ton of cool companies that came out of that. Even like some of the sales funnel stuff, right? Like I forget his name and Drip got sold to them. I can’t remember. Lead pages. Clay Collins. There was all these cool SAS services that suddenly we could connect to. But now things have moved on and those have started to become WordPress components as plugins. And in doing so, I think it’s important for us to kind of use the Napoli as an example of be very cautious about introducing a plug in into your ecosystem. That’s a feature versus a framework because you don’t want to take a whole framework and shove it into your site. You want just the one plugin that does the one thing well. And in the forms there’s a whole bunch of them. But in the Quizzes, my God, there must be 500 different things that can do Quizzes, right? I mean, quizzes is just a glorified CMS or LMS with some graphics on it.
[01:09:44.750] – Spencer Forman
So I would just be selective try a few of the ones we talked about and then use it for the right purpose. But be sure that you’re doing it in a way, honestly that onboards the user into your CRM, into your automation because that’s the whole point here. Otherwise you’re wasting time.
[01:10:01.710] – Jonathan Denwood
We’re going to wrap it up now folks. Thank you so much Spence. It’s been a fun show. If you need any advice, both me and Spencer run the membership machine. Facebook group. Do a search on Facebook, join it. You got any questions, I’m sure Spencer will come up with Spencer and myself and we will try and help you and just join the community there. And you can also watch the live show on that group every Friday and then ask us questions live by joining in that we will be back next week. I think we got next week’s topic which is going to be Forms. That’s great. And we will be back soon. We’ll see you soon folks. Bye.
[01:10:46.410] – Ending
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