Shift

The release of Laravel 9 and it being a long-term support (LTS) version, I am able to raise prices. Shifts for older, unsupported Laravel versions move to the highest pricing tier ($29). I also bumped the latest version into the middle pricing tier ($19). I still offer it for a limited time at the introductory pricing tier ($9). However, I no longer leave it at this tier until the next release, since Laravel has adopted an annual release cycle.

Shift's revenue grew 38% in 2021. This is a significant drop from prior years. That being said, 38% revenue growth is still good. Higher than any salary raise I might have received still working at a job.

A few things played a factor. First, Laravel did not release a new version in 2021. Normally there are 2 per year. Shift definitely sees a sales increase following releases. In addition, it gets new users off the back of the "release buzz". Second, annual revenue is now a big number. While going from $60k to $120k and $300k to $600k both double revenue, the later is much different.

After 6 years, Shift surpassed $1,000,000 in lifetime revenue. I forecasted this for earlier in the year. However, without a new version of Laravel released in 2021, it took a bit longer.

Shift is still growing 30% YoY, so I'm hoping to hit the next $1M much sooner. Especially with a new Laravel release finally coming next January.

Shift hit 50k runs. When I first launched Shift, this was my penultimate milestone. 100k being as far out as I thought. It's moving about 10k Shifts per year now. Even with the Laravel 9 release was pushed out again to January 2022, I could see reaching 100k in the next two years. Especially as we expand the catalog beyond Laravel.

With help from Jess Archer, I've been building a desktop version of the Shift Workbench these past few months.

Since there was downtime with the Laravel release moved back, I thought building an Electron app would be fun. The cloud-based Workbench doesn't get a lot of use. It's more of a value-add for subscribers.

However, this is a bit experiment to see if a desktop app - something that's close to the developer - gets used more. If so, I think this could become a new delivery medium for Shift.

Today Shift crossed 45k runs. That's 45,000 Laravel applications that have used Shift to upgrade their projects. Crazy.

These numbers are still growing pretty well despite the Laravel 9 release being pushed out to September. I'd expect to cross 50k runs one it does.

Even though the Laravel release was pushed back, I went ahead and updated the "Shifty Plans". The "Upgrade" plan has gone back to Laravel 5.5, which is now unsupported and two long term support (LTS) releases ago. In addition, I felt the naming was confusing: "Upgrade" and "CI".

So updating the plans allowed me to not only modernize what was included with each plan, but also change their names to better align them with their use case. Now the "LTS" plan includes Shifts back to the previous LTS release, and the "Latest" plan includes the Shift for the latest release of Laravel.

Shift's revenue grew 112% in 2020. This is a bit less than last year, but still a remarkable rate. Shift has effectively doubles its annual revenue every year since launch. Revenue from Shift now surpasses the salary from my highest paying job. Amazing if it doubles again in 2021…

My daughter, Isabella Rose, was born. While not a direct milestone of Shift, it is related. I don't think I'll be able to be such a large part of her life without Shift. Its success has afforded me the flexibility to spend more time with her as well as provide her with opportunities she might not have otherwise had.

Another Shift milestone! This marks 30000 Shift runs. With each run, Shift grows a bit smarter from user feedback, internal analytics, and code refactors. It really is a positive feedback loop - the more Shifts run, the better it gets, causing more users to run Shift.