Plugins and extensions for sale

A plugin or extension lives on top of someone else’s platform. Its value rests on three things: the active users, the paying customers and the ability to keep the product updated as the platform changes. Ask for active installs or users month by month over the last 12–24 months, not just total downloads. A stable or growing number of active users is a better sign than a high download count from a period that has passed.

Then look at revenue. Does it come from recurring licences or subscriptions renewed every year or month, or from one-off purchases that must be sold again to new customers? Ask about the renewal rate and churn, and how many hours go into support. A plugin with many free users and few paying ones can carry a heavy support load without matching income. Ask too how new users find the product: the platform’s own store, search, its own website or partners.

Plugins and extensions are usually priced on profit. Sitavo’s indicative range is 2.5–4.5 times annual profit, cross-checked against 1–3 times annual revenue. Recurring licences and low churn push the price up. Platform dependence pulls it down: WordPress, Shopify and the browser makers set the rules for their stores, and a change in rules or technology can hit the product overnight. These are indicative market ranges, not a valuation of a specific plugin. Use the price estimate and the market data for the category.

• Active users over time, not just total downloads.
• Licence revenue split between new sales and renewals.
• Renewal rate and churn for paying customers.
• Support load: number of requests and hours per month.
• Costs for hosting, licence server, payment provider and platform fees.

• Can the store listing and developer account be transferred under the platform’s rules?
• Access to the source code, so you or a developer can assess quality, security and technical debt.
• Open source licences such as the GPL, and third-party components the product depends on.
• Billing: its own (for example Stripe), a licensing platform such as Freemius, or the platform’s own billing.
• Personal data: what the product collects, the privacy policy and data processing agreements.
• Trademark, domain, website and documentation.
• Past security vulnerabilities and how they were handled.

Source code and customer lists are confidential, so sellers usually share them in a data room behind an NDA. See also the pre-purchase checklist.

In a purchase you usually take over the store listing or access to it, the source code and repository, licence server and payment account, domain, website, support system and customer list. Each platform has its own rules for moving a listing to a new owner, and not everything can be moved without conditions. Settle this before you agree on a price. Licences and subscriptions in a payment provider cannot always be moved to a new account either, so plan how existing customers will keep being billed. Agree a transition period in which the seller helps with the first update under your account. Read more in the handover guide.

Plugins are most often bought with own funds, and larger deals sometimes include an earn-out tied to renewals after the takeover. Sitavo does not provide financing. Messaging sellers and making offers is free, and price and terms are agreed in the deal workflow. The purchase price is paid directly to the seller — Sitavo never holds the money. See also SaaS businesses, apps and courses and digital products for sale.