Brainstorm Force, makers of the popular Astra theme, has invested in LatePoint, a commercial booking and appointment scheduling plugin for WordPress. LatePoint is used on 21,000 websites to enable bookings for small businesses, such as salons, therapists, doctors, spas, and fitness studios. It also supports a growing library of add-ons for further customizing the booking experience.
“This is a strategic investment, primarily made to begin integrating LatePoint into our products and offer it to our customers,” Brainstorm Force CEO Sujay Pawar said.
“Thousands of businesses build their websites with our Astra theme and Starter Templates every day. Many of these businesses could benefit if they were able to get bookings for their services from the websites they built. So, this investment allows us to offer a deeply integrated booking and appointment solution to these customers.”
ZipWP, the AI WordPress website builder product the company recently launched, will be utilizing LatePoint in the websites that are generated with appointment booking and scheduling features. Brainstorm Force also plans to integrate LatePoint features into its Spectra page builder, which is based on Gutenberg and has more than 600,000 active installs. Spectra will be updated to include blocks for bookings and appointment scheduling.
The company is integrating LatePoint across its entire product suite, including adding it to SureCart, their e-commerce plugin, to enable small businesses to accept subscription payments. Brainstorm Force will be including it with its SureTriggers automation platform to connect LatePoint to other WordPress apps, plugins, and services.
“We realized that the service commerce space within WordPress was somewhat underserved,” Pawar said.
“Platforms like Squarespace offer Acuity Scheduling and Wix provides Wix Bookings. SaaS solutions like Calendly often come with very limited features and substantially high monthly recurring costs.
“Within the WordPress ecosystem, there are a few options, such as WooCommerce Bookings, Amelia, Bookly, etc. We meticulously evaluated all of them.
“What impressed us most about LatePoint was its exceptional code quality, modern design flexibility, and robustness.”
Pawar said the investment is in the six-figures but the exact amount will not be disclosed due to a confidentiality clause.
“The idea behind the investment is to initiate this partnership and possibly acquire LatePoint in the future,” Pawar said.
Brainstorm Force currently offers more than 70 products that power 7+ million websites. This new investment is aimed at capturing small business customers with a payment and booking solutions fully integrated with the company’s starter templates and other products.
