About / the people behind Zendra
15 years studying why customers become regulars.
Zendra is built by Kestrel — we’ve built membership software powering over 40,000 sites. We turned everything we know into one Shopify-native app.
150k+
stores powered
$2.2B+
in merchant sales
4.9 ★
App Store rating
Built for Shopify
•
15+ years building memberships
•
40k+ membership sites powered
01.
Field notes
Our story starts in IRC channels & GitHub repos
Apprenticeship in belonging.
We didn’t set out to study membership programs. We kept building them, watched what made customers stay, and eventually couldn’t stop taking notes.
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2011 / WooCommerce
SkyVerge
Our founders started building WooCommerce plugins together — eventually 80+ extensions, including WooCommerce Memberships, which powered 40,000+ membership sites.
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2012 / Shopify
Shopstorm
We expanded to Shopify when the App Store held only a couple hundred apps, and built a suite of top-rated apps for a fast-growing platform.
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2020–2023 / acquired
The GoDaddy years
Shopstorm was acquired in 2018, then SkyVerge and Jilt in 2020. Inside GoDaddy, our team led efforts building ecommerce apps, plugins, payment tools, and API platforms.
⦿
»
2024 / Kestrel
A new venture
We started Kestrel to bring the membership and subscription tools we’d honed back to independent sellers — and launched Zendra for Shopify in early 2026.
Zendra takes what we learned from a decade of membership, subscription, and loyalty software, and bundles it into a package that’s flexible but still delightful to use. Our jam is helping SMBs find new revenue streams and new ways to delight their customers.
(Selling digital products or file downloads, too? Meet Fileflare, our companion app for secure file delivery.)
02.
The researchers
Meet the team
Small crew, deep expertise.
We believe membership programs can unlock your brand’s revenue and profit potential — and we’ve organized our careers around proving it.
Ian Misner
General manager
Beka Rice
Product architect
Justin Stern
Founding engineer
Max Rice
Founding engineer
Simon Porter
Senior engineer
Illimar Tambek
Senior engineer
03.
Product values
What guides the build
Powerful, and a delight to use.
Zendra exists to bring professional-grade membership programs to every merchant. These principles shape every release.
001
Flexible structure
Zendra doesn’t lock you into one type of membership. Build a subscribe & save program, an online course, digital access, a purchasing club — whatever structure fits your business — and attach the perks that make joining worthwhile.
002
No code required
Legacy membership apps lean on manual tagging, custom Liquid, or API integrations. Zendra does that work for you: choose what’s gated and which perks members get, and it creates the discount rules, tags, checkout validations, and template restrictions behind the scenes.
003
Partnership & community
Your customers are a tribe, and the relationship you build with them drives loyalty and repeat purchases. We’re committed to partnering with you on an experience that’s clear and delightful for both you and your members.
004
Consistent improvement
We ship improvements constantly — more ways to grow your roster, retain subscribers, and offer new perks. And we absolutely love hearing from users about what would make Zendra the best app for you.
start with a clear promise
Make a place worth
belonging to.
Start free with up to 75 active members. Launch your first plan in minutes, then add the perks that make people want to stay.