ThemeSupport: 10 years, one steady WordPress team.

ThemeSupport builds, fixes and looks after WordPress sites for businesses. It also works behind the scenes for more than 40 agencies through its white-label partner program, and it is an Automattic for Agencies Pro Partner for Pressable, WooCommerce and Jetpack. All of that runs on a small, fully remote team of developers. sourceBOLD has helped build it since ThemeSupport’s first day in 2016.

About ownership: ThemeSupport became a sourceBOLD client in 2016. Since early 2022, sourceBOLD and ThemeSupport have had a mutual parent company, Proovn LLC; they continue to run as separate businesses.

The challenge

ThemeSupport was founded in 2016 and has worked with sourceBOLD from its first day. Its work lands on its clients’ schedules: a store that breaks on launch day, an agency deadline, a plugin update that needs testing before Monday. It needed WordPress developers with 4 to 8 hours of overlap with a US working day, who would stay long enough to learn each client’s site, and who could join the team without ThemeSupport ever becoming their employer.

The solution

sourceBOLD finds and vets the developers. ThemeSupport picks them and directs the work. sourceBOLD contracts and pays them, for as long as they stay.

1. ThemeSupport describes the role. The skills, the budget and the must-haves, such as WooCommerce or Elementor experience.
2. sourceBOLD finds and vets. Candidates are checked against the role, their work is reviewed, and sourceBOLD talks with every candidate in English before ThemeSupport meets them.
3. ThemeSupport meets the short list and chooses. The final call is always ThemeSupport’s.
4. sourceBOLD holds the contract. sourceBOLD acts as the contractor of record: it holds each developer’s contract and pays them. ThemeSupport works with one US company and gets one US-dollar invoice.
5. The developer joins the team. They join ThemeSupport’s team with 4 to 8 hours of overlap with a US working day, and ThemeSupport directs the work. Built to last, with no lock-in: month-to-month, 30 days’ notice.

The results

• About 6 developers have joined ThemeSupport through sourceBOLD.
• 2 have been on the team since 2016. Clients and agency partners work with the same developers year after year.
• They cover the core of the business: custom themes and plugins, Elementor and WooCommerce sites and white-label work for agency partners.
• One contract partner, one invoice. sourceBOLD holds each developer’s contract and pays them, so ThemeSupport never became their employer.