Open Studio

Open Studio is one of the world’s leading platforms for learning jazz online, boasting over 40,000 students worldwide. They collaborate with some of the biggest names in jazz, including Christian McBride, Aaron Parks, Greg Hutchinson, and Fred Hersch, among others. This positions Open Studio as the largest online jazz community, offering courses, live events, and a vibrant community for jazz musicians of all skill levels. The platform has risen in popularity through the Open Studio YouTube channel, led by instructors Peter Martin (Co-Founder and CEO) and Adam Maness (Creative Director).  

Initially, Open Studio operated using a combination of three different platforms:

• Circle.so for their community.
• Podia for eCommerce and course hosting.
• WordPress for processing subscriptions from early customers.

This fragmented setup created numerous pain points: Data was scattered across different systems, making it difficult to manage user information, payments, and memberships efficiently. Additionally, maintaining continuity across multiple payment gateways, especially for subscriptions, was a challenge. These inefficiencies became a roadblock as Open Studio’s audience expanded and their needs evolved, pushing them to seek a single, unified, seamless platform.

The Challenge

Recognizing the inefficiencies of managing multiple platforms and the need for a more streamlined customer experience, Open Studio turned to Saucal for a comprehensive solution. Their primary goal was to consolidate their three distinct systems into a unified WordPress platform. Additionally, they wanted to maintain continuity of payments, user data, and memberships while minimizing downtime.

Our task was clear:

• Migrate all data: Users, memberships, products, course content, and payment histories needed to be transferred from Podia, Circle.so, and WordPress into a single platform without data loss.
• Maintain payment and subscription continuity: The paying and auto-renew feature for subscriptions had to be flawlessly transferred across multiple payment gateways (Stripe, PayPal, etc.) without any disruptions to ongoing payments or previous ones.
• Minimize downtime: The entire migration had to be completed with minimal downtime.
• Custom enhancements: Open Studio also wanted to add new features to optimize the site’s functionality.

The Stakes

Any downtime could result in significant disruptions: subscriptions might fail to process, users could be locked out of the platform, live sessions could be interrupted, and members might lose access to course content. This would directly impact customer satisfaction and potentially lead to a loss in revenue.

Given that Open Studio’s users are spread across different time zones, ensuring a smooth migration with minimal downtime was essential. On top of that, we needed to guarantee the retention of all user data – from active members to those with lapsed subscriptions. 

The success of the migration was pivotal to maintaining business continuity, keeping users engaged, and protecting Open Studio’s reputation as a reliable, world-class learning platform.

The Results

• Smooth migration: We successfully migrated all data – users, courses, memberships, transactions, etc. – without losing any customer information.
• Zero interruptions to payment and subscriptions (old and new): We paused and resumed all Stripe and PayPal subscriptions, ensuring that customers’ payments continued without any action needed on their part.
• Minimal downtime: The entire migration process took only two hours of downtime.
• Enhanced site functionality: We developed a new, customizable member dashboard, added a live events calendar, improved search capabilities, created a custom bookmarking system, and many other custom tweaks, all while integrating the Circle.so community into the WordPress site with SSO login.

Saucal’s ability to handle this complex migration while improving our site’s functionality was impressive. Their deep expertise in WooCommerce and WordPress made them the perfect partner for us. The transition was completed with just two hours of downtime, minimizing disruption for our customers and preventing any loss of revenue.

– Dan Martin, COO & Co-Founder at Open Studio

The Process

💻 We began with an in-depth discovery session to understand the intricacies of Open Studio’s existing platform setup and their migration goals. Our first priority was ensuring that no customer data or transactions would be lost in the process. 

To achieve this, we created a powerful, automated migration script that transferred bulk data – including user information, orders, and memberships – from CSV files. This script allowed us to process a preliminary migration a week before the final release. It also enabled us to identify and skip records that had already been processed, making the final migration efficient and ensuring zero data loss.

A preliminary migration was conducted a week before the release to identify any potential issues, with the final migration happening over a carefully orchestrated two-hour downtime window.

Our key migration steps:

Data migration:

• Transferred all active and past users from Podia, WordPress, and Circle.so.
• Migrated products, courses, memberships, and historical payment data to the new WooCommerce setup.
• Imported all course content into LearnDash, a powerful LMS (Learning Management System) plugin for WordPress. This allowed Open Studio to create, host, and manage all of their course content directly within WordPress, ensuring a smooth learning experience and continuity for students.

Subscription handling:

• Leveraged the Stripe API to pause all active subscriptions on Podia before migrating them to WooCommerce Subscriptions and then reactivated them without requiring any customer input. This careful process ensured that no payments were missed and no user had to take additional steps.
• Retained all payment histories by mapping past transactions into WooCommerce’s order history.

Custom enhancements:

• Tightly embedded the Circle.so community into the WordPress site with SSO automatic authentication. This way, users could easily switch between the community and the rest of the site without needing to log in multiple times.
• Developed a customizable member dashboard, a live events calendar, and enhanced search tools for filtering courses by artist, skill level, or instrument.

Final validation:

After the DNS propagation was complete and the new WordPress platform was live, we ran a final validation of the entire system to ensure that all data had been transferred correctly and that all features were fully functional.

⭐ As you can see, we ensured that Open Studio’s migration was smooth, efficient, and completed with zero data loss. This project wasn’t just about transferring data; it was about transforming Open Studio’s platform into a more robust, feature-rich experience for their customers.

Conclusion

Open Studio’s partnership with us at Saucal not only highlights the expertise required to navigate complex technical challenges but also underscores the vast potential of WordPress as a highly customizable and scalable platform. 

With our team of experts and the right configuration, WordPress can smoothly integrate and support all aspects of a business – from eCommerce to content hosting, community management, and beyond. Our deep knowledge of WooCommerce and WordPress allowed us to do just that for Open Studio, creating a unified platform that enhances both functionality and user experience. Open Studio’s platform is now more streamlined, user-friendly, and poised for growth.

Our transition to a unified WordPress platform was smooth and painless thanks to Saucal. The new features they developed for us have taken our site to the next level, and the migration was flawless.

– Dan Martin, COO & Co-Founder at Open Studio

If your business is facing a complex migration or technical challenge, we have the expertise to ensure a smooth and hassle-free transition. Just like we did for Open Studio, we’ll work closely with you to develop customized WooCommerce solutions that support your long-term success.

Contact us today to start your journey toward a smooth sailing and optimized WooCommerce enterprise-level business!