Hayden
Co-Founder, Ashgrey Digital
"Running Ashgrey on our own platform keeps us honest. We feel every friction point our customers feel, and we fix it because we have to — not because someone filed a ticket."
The Origin
Ashgrey Digital exists because of an acquisition. When Platfio acquired AxipApp — the app development platform whose technology now powers Platfio's app building system — it didn't just acquire code. It acquired a large group of existing customers, each with live applications and ongoing service relationships.
Rather than hand those customers off or wind them down, we made a deliberate decision: spin them out into a standalone agency that would operate entirely on Platfio. That agency became Ashgrey Digital.
Learn more about this story on our About Us page and the AxipApp page.
The Dogfooding Agency
Ashgrey Digital runs on Platfio. Not just the app building — everything. The CRM, the outbound prospecting, the plan building, the proposals, the payment processing, the client portal, the ticketing system. Every corner of the platform that Platfio offers to agency customers, Ashgrey uses daily.
This is intentional. Ashgrey Digital is Platfio's dogfooding vehicle. When something in the platform is clunky, we feel it immediately. When a workflow could be faster, we're the first to notice. When a feature doesn't quite work the way an agency needs it to, we know — because we're the agency that needs it.
One of the clearest wins: the lead-to-signed-deal pipeline is roughly 5× faster than it was before consolidation. Plans flow directly into proposals, proposals into payment, payment into project kick-off. There's no copy-pasting between tools, no waiting on a third-party quoting system, no deals going cold while paperwork catches up. The speed compounds — faster closes mean more capacity, which means more revenue from the same team.
Ashgrey no longer takes on new clients. But the existing book of business provides a steady, real-world exercise in running an agency on Platfio month after month.
Why It Matters
Most software companies test their product in sandboxes and staging environments. Ashgrey Digital lets Platfio test its product in the real world — with real clients, real deadlines, and real consequences for getting it wrong.
It also gives us something harder to get: proximity to the businesses that ultimately benefit from the applications our agency customers build. We don't just understand agencies. We understand the restaurants, gyms, clinics, and service businesses that use the apps those agencies deliver. That perspective shapes every product decision we make.
Apps Under Management
Ashgrey Digital manages a diverse portfolio of client apps — all built and maintained on Platfio. Here are a few examples from the book of business inherited from the AxipApp acquisition.
What We've Learned
Running Ashgrey Digital hasn't just improved Platfio's product — it's changed how we build. Features that seem obvious in a product meeting reveal unexpected complexity when you try to use them daily. Conversely, some of Platfio's most-loved features came directly from pain points we discovered running Ashgrey.
The 5× improvement in close speed wasn't a one-off. It's a structural advantage that comes from having every step of the sales pipeline — CRM, planning, proposals, payments — connected in one system. Discovery insights flow into proposals without re-entry. Pricing is pre-calculated from the plan. Clients receive and sign in minutes, not days. That speed is now baked into how every Platfio agency can operate.
With over 30 apps under management and every agency operation running on the platform, Ashgrey Digital is the most comprehensive stress test Platfio has. If it works for us, we're confident it works for you.
"Every feature in Platfio gets tested the way it should be: by a real agency, running real projects, for real clients. That's the standard we hold ourselves to."
Ready to run your agency on the same platform we trust for ours?
Start Free Trial