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Did you know: Sandhills owns 3 acres of open land in a popular Hutch neighborhood simply to preserve nature as a communal space for people and animals alike.

About Sandhills

Time is our single most valuable and limited asset. Our goal is not to waste it. We work to live, for time is one thing we cannot waste. ⏳
13 years in business

As a self-funded company, we're proud of our humble beginnings and excited for our future growth.

Building for the future

We aim for longevity in all that we do.

Focused on conservation

The remnants that remain of our natural world are our most precious resources. They must be protected.

Headquartered In "Hutch"

Hutch is located in a region of Kansas known for its prairies and hills called the Sandhills. Get it?

Today Sandhills Development is a small organization that focuses on conservation and restoration of green spaces and native habitats, but we didn’t start that way.

At our beginning, Sandhills Development was a college dorm-room hobby for Pippin Williamson. By building small websites for anyone that would hire him, Pippin discovered a passion for web programming that led him into the freedoms and challenges of self-employment. Through custom website creation for clients big and small, Pippin then found his way into product creation by developing solutions that could be reused across many sites.

After he began selling his products on code marketplaces and found success there, Pippin set custom development aside and focused exclusively on a growing suite of products built primarily for eCommerce and membership websites. Rapid growth and success with his products led Pippin to form a company and hire the first team member and employee, Sean Davis.

Six+ years later Sandhills Development became a fully remote, distributed company that employed dozens of people all around.

In late 2021, the software products we built were acquired, allowing Pippin and Sandhills Development to leave the world of software and set sights on a new focus: conservation.

Now our goals are to conserve, preserve, and restore land to its natural state in and around central Kansas.

Did you know: Our microbrewery, Sandhills Brewing, has an awesome Instagram profile full of beer and good times. Check it out →

Sandhills History

From 6 different countries around the world, we slowly came together to create what we believed in, and what made our customers' lives better.

Here's how we did it.

2009
Fueled by coffee and interrupted by school work, Pippin begins building the foundation of what would eventually become Sandhills Development, LLC.
Over a few years, custom solutions built for clients begin to take shape as standalone WordPress plugins.
Pippin studied Linguistics at the University of Kansas. Writing code was merely a hobby at this point.
2011
Pippin's Plugins launches as a resource for WordPress developers and a place to distribute Pippin's WordPress plugins.
Pippin graduated from the University of Kansas with a bachelor's degree in Linguistics.
2012
Restrict Content Pro launches as a membership solution for WordPress.
Easy Digital Downloads launches as an eCommerce solution for selling digital products on WordPress.
Sugar Calendar launches as an event calendar plugin for WordPress.
Take a look at some of our projects in their early stages. 2012 in review
Fun fact: the company wasn't always called Sandhills Development. Read 2013 in review to see the original name.
2014
AffiliateWP launches as an affiliate program solution for WordPress sites.
Not yet under the Sandhills umbrella, Phil D. launches WP Simple Pay as a Stripe Payments plugin for WordPress.
Sandhills hires its first official team member, Sean, who joined as a support technician and theme developer.
Read 2014 in review for a glimpse into our significant growth as a company.
2015
Chris joins the team as a co-lead developer for Easy Digital Downloads. Andrew, co-founder of AffiliateWP, joins the team to focus on AffiliateWP and Easy Digital Downloads. John P. joins the team as a developer. Michael joins the team as a support technician.
The Sandhills team meets up in Las Vegas twice this year.
This year, we began confronting one of our biggest challenges as a company. Check out 2015 in review for the scoop.
2016
Lisa G. joins the team as a support technician. Drew joins the team as a developer to focus primarily on AffiliateWP.
Company meet-up held in Tempe, Arizona.
This year, we made a significant change to our business model. See 2016 in review if you're curious how it worked out.
2017
Sugar Calendar re-launches as an event calendar plugin for WordPress.
Ashley, Phil J., and John J. join the company as developers. Ginger and Keri join to focus on customer support and documentation. Kyle joins the team as a marketer.
Sean, Chris, Andrew, and John P. officially join Pippin as Partners in Sandhills Development.
Annual company meet-up, now known as Sandhills Summit, held in Keystone, Colorado.
Read 2017 in review to learn about some of our growing pains this year.
2018
Sandhills Brewing opens its doors as one of very few microbreweries in Hutchinson, Kansas! Sandhills Brewing now has a location in Hutch, as well as Mission, Kansas.
Phil D. joins the team, bringing with him WP Simple Pay. What a great day!
Daniel and Mihai join the team to focus on support. Tyler joins the company to manage social outreach and help with administration efforts. Mandy joins as a content writer. Tunbosun joins as a developer to focus on AffiliateWP.
Sandhills purchases its first plot of land in Hutch with a goal of preserving nature in a quickly growing city.
It's not official until there's a blog, right? Watch Sandhills Brewing do its thing over time. Sandhills Brewing blog
Sellbird, an under-construction service for facilitating digital product and media sales, reaches its mature development stage.
Sandhills Summit held in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Who knew we'd benefit from establishing a real marketing team? Take a look at 2018 in review to see what we learned about marketing this year.
2019
Andrea and Adam join the rockstar support crew. Spencer and Alex join as much needed developers for our fleet of software products. Michael, previously part-time, becomes a full-time team member. Joe joins the team as a content creator.
We bid farewell to John P., Partner and long-time developer. We appreciate his efforts to breathe new life into Restrict Content Pro during his time as Product Lead. He will be missed!
Sandhills purchases the building that houses our headquarters office as well as the Hutch microbrewery and tap room. With this purchase, we also become property managers, renting storefront space to a yoga studio.
We launched our payouts service for AffiliateWP! Our service makes paying affiliates directly to their bank accounts simple and affordable. It also supports more than 30 countries. Take a look!
Sandhills Summit held in Rockford, Illinois.
This year was all about laying a foundation for the future. Read 2019 in review to understand what that looks like for Sandhills Development.
2020
Sandhills completes its second land stewardship project by purchasing 54 acres of Tallgrass prairie land! Read more about the project here.
Shayne joins the Sandhills team as a support technician while Robin and Lisa C. join as developers! Welcome to the team, you all!
Restrict Content Pro acquired by iThemes / Liquid Web, allowing us to narrow our focus. Read more about this acquisition.
Taylor becomes the newest member of our team as a support technician.

Sellbird development put on hold in light of the uncertainties of COVID-19.

2021
Nina and David join the team as our newest developers.

Awesome Motive acquires all of our WordPress products, services and team, changing our focus solely to nature conservation. Pippin returns to a company of one.

The 1,000th payout was processed through our Payouts Service!

$1,000,000 has been processed through our Payouts Service.

That's 13 years and counting. Cheers! ?