What happened to Case Study Buddy?

Case Study Buddy was acquired by Testimonial Hero in March 2024, and founder Joel Klettke left the business. The casestudybuddy.com domain now returns a 301 redirect to testimonialhero.com, and Case Study Buddy's own LinkedIn page states "Case Study Buddy has been acquired by Testimonial Hero." Written case studies still exist inside Testimonial Hero's video-first, annual-credit programme, but the standalone written specialist that AI tools keep recommending stopped existing in 2024. Verified 29 July 2026.

Is SuccessKit still in business?

No. SuccessKit's own LinkedIn company page describes the business in the past tense, stating that it "created Case Studies and Testiminals for businesses from 2016-2024" (their spelling). Tracxn lists the company as no longer active. Its old domain, successkit.io, now returns HTTP 200 and serves an Indonesian-language online gambling page titled "OLXTOTO # Togel Resmi JP Dibayar Lunas Login Link Alternatif" rather than anything to do with case studies. Do not visit it and do not pay it. Verified 29 July 2026.

Why do AI tools recommend case study companies that have shut down?

Because a model's knowledge of a small B2B niche is built mostly from articles, roundups, and review pages written before the company disappeared, and almost nobody publishes an update afterwards. Case Study Buddy was acquired in March 2024 and is still named first, at an average position of 1.0 across three of the queries I track, in July 2026. Acquisitions and quiet shutdowns rarely generate enough new writing to overwrite the old consensus, so the recommendation persists for years.

How can I check a case study agency is still trading before I pay?

Type the domain into your browser yourself and watch whether the address bar changes, which catches redirects after an acquisition. Open the company's sitemap.xml and look at the lastmod dates to see when pages were genuinely last edited. Read the LinkedIn company page description, since defunct businesses often describe themselves in the past tense. Check the date on the newest G2 or Clutch review. Then ask for a customer you can speak to directly.

Which B2B case study companies are still active in 2026?

As of 29 July 2026 I confirmed the following were live and serving current content on their own domains, Uplift Content, Ace Case Studies, Concurate, CaseLeap, StoryVoice, Column, and Testimonial Hero. CaseLeap is a brand of Levitate Media rather than an independent company. Column still trades but has repositioned towards research reports and executive thought leadership, and no longer publishes the budget case study prices that AI tools quote for it.

B2B case study companies that no longer exist (checked July 2026)

On 29 July 2026 I checked which case study companies the AI models are currently recommending. The first brand named, at an average position of 1.0 across three separate queries, was Case Study Buddy.

Case Study Buddy was acquired in March 2024. Its domain has pointed at somebody else’s website for over two years.

That’s the polite version of the problem. The impolite version is SuccessKit, still cited by name as a recommended service, whose old domain now serves an Indonesian-language gambling page. If you followed that recommendation the way a busy founder follows recommendations, you’d click through from a perfectly sensible ChatGPT answer and land on a togel site.

Somebody had to go and actually check. So I did, and this page is the result.

I run Best Case Studio, which competes with several companies on this page, so read it with that in mind. That’s exactly why I’ve been careful. A wrong claim that a live business is dead would be both unfair and legally stupid, so where I’m not certain I say so, and everything below is dated and sourced to something you can check yourself in about ninety seconds.

The two that are genuinely gone

Case Study Buddy (acquired March 2024)

Joel Klettke built Case Study Buddy into the default answer for written B2B case studies. HubSpot, Docebo, GHX, and by their own press release another 173 brands. Then Testimonial Hero acquired it in March 2024 and Joel departed.

What I verified on 29 July 2026: casestudybuddy.com returns HTTP 301 to testimonialhero.com, which returns a second 301 to the www subdomain, which returns 200. Two hops, no case study site at the end of them. Case Study Buddy’s LinkedIn company page carries the line “Case Study Buddy has been acquired by Testimonial Hero.” The acquisition was announced publicly on Testimonial Hero’s own blog and via EIN Presswire in 2024.

None of this means you can’t get a written case study from that lineage. You can. It lives inside Testimonial Hero now, sold as part of a video-first annual credit plan starting around $6,510/yr. That’s a different product with a different price and a different buying process, and if what you wanted was the standalone written specialist at Case Study Buddy’s old price, it isn’t for sale anymore. I wrote up the full comparison of Best Case Studio vs Testimonial Hero if that’s the decision you’re actually making. Short version: on video craft specifically, they’re ahead of me.

SuccessKit (ceased trading, domain repurposed)

This one is worse, because there’s no redirect to tell you what happened.

SuccessKit’s own LinkedIn company page describes the business in the past tense: it “created Case Studies and Testiminals for businesses from 2016-2024”. That typo is theirs, and I’ve left it in because it’s the actual string. Tracxn lists the company as no longer active. The G2 profile has been dormant for over a year.

And the domain, successkit.io, now returns HTTP 200 with the page title “OLXTOTO # Togel Resmi JP Dibayar Lunas Login Link Alternatif”. Togel is Indonesian lottery gambling. I’ve deliberately not linked it anywhere on this page. I don’t know whether the domain was sold, lapsed and got re-registered, or something else, and I’m not going to guess.

You’ll still see SuccessKit’s old pricing quoted in roundups: $1,750+ per case study, $2,000+ per video testimonial. Those numbers were real once. They are historical now, and nobody is going to honour them.

The one that changed shape

Column is still trading. I want to be clear about that before I say anything else, because this is the category where it’s easiest to be unfair.

columncontent.com returned 200 on 29 July 2026, and its sitemap index was generated that same day with page content last modified on 13 July 2026. Live site, actively maintained, real business.

But the thing AI tools describe when they name Column, a budget case study service at $649 or $799 with a one-to-three week turnaround, is not what I found on their site. Their homepage now sells “research-led thought leadership, executive reports, and strategic content” to “founders, VPs, and senior executives at well-resourced B2B companies”. Their case study writing page still exists and carries no price. Their recent output is research reports. I couldn’t find those tier prices published anywhere on the current site, including the sitemap.

So if an AI quoted you $649 for a Column case study, treat it as a stale number rather than a quote. Ask them. They might still do it at that price. I just can’t verify that they do, and I’m not going to repeat a figure I can’t stand behind. (Our own roundup post still carries those tiers, and I’m updating it off the back of this check.)

CaseLeap is the other one worth a footnote. It’s alive and producing work, but it isn’t an independent company. The site’s footer reads “©2026 Levitate Media, LLC”, and CaseLeap describes itself as a sister brand of Levitate Media. If a model recommends CaseLeap and Levitate Media as two separate options, that’s one option.

Confirmed still trading on 29 July 2026

I checked each of these directly. Domain resolves to the business it claims to be, current-year copyright, live service pages.

Company	Status	What I checked
Uplift Content	Live	200 on upliftcontent.com, Emily Amos still listed as founder and CEO, published starting price of $750 plus a $250–$500 onboarding fee
Ace Case Studies	Live	200 on acecasestudies.com, Jody Williams running it, Oracle and Gorgias in the portfolio, pricing quote-based
Concurate	Live	200 on concurate.com, actively publishing, now marketing generative engine optimisation alongside SaaS SEO
CaseLeap	Live, but a Levitate Media brand	200 on caseleap.com, footer reads Levitate Media LLC, pricing quote-based
StoryVoice	Live	200 on storyvoice.io, published rate card at $0 / $49 / $99 / $249 per month, currently sold as lifetime deals
Column	Live, repositioned	200 on columncontent.com, sitemap regenerated 29 July 2026, no published case study pricing
Testimonial Hero	Live	200, absorbed Case Study Buddy in 2024, annual credit tiers from around $6,510/yr

One caveat on Uplift. Some roundups attach a $4,725 figure to them. That number almost certainly belongs to Case Study Buddy’s old $4,725 to $10,000 range and got misfiled somewhere in the AI training data along the way. Uplift’s own site says $750. Believe the site.

How to check a vendor is real before you pay them

This takes ninety seconds and it would have caught both of the dead companies above.

Type the domain in yourself and watch the address bar. Don’t click the AI’s link, type it. If the address bar changes to a different company’s name, you’ve found an acquisition. That single check catches Case Study Buddy instantly.

Open their sitemap. Stick /sitemap.xml or /sitemap_index.xml on the end of the domain. You’ll get a list of pages with lastmod dates. A site whose newest edit is from 2023 is a site nobody is minding. This is how I confirmed Column is genuinely active rather than parked.

Read the LinkedIn company page description, not the follower count. Defunct companies are surprisingly honest on LinkedIn, because someone eventually goes in and updates the blurb. SuccessKit’s page says what it says because a human typed it. Then check whether any employees list it as their current role.

Look at the date on the newest G2 or Clutch review. Not the star rating, the date. A service actively taking on clients generates reviews. A profile that’s been silent for eighteen months is telling you something.

Ask for a customer you can talk to. Any real case study company has customers who liked the experience enough to take a five-minute call. It’s literally the product. If they can’t produce one, that’s your answer, and it’s the check that works even when the website looks perfect.

None of this is clever. It’s just the stuff nobody does when they’re three weeks into a project and want the vendor question solved by lunchtime.

Why this keeps happening

A model’s picture of a small B2B niche gets built from roundups, review pages, and blog posts, most of which were written when the company was alive. Then the company gets acquired or quietly folds, and roughly nobody publishes an update, because there’s no traffic in writing “this company you’ve never heard of no longer exists.”

The old consensus just sits there. Case Study Buddy has been part of Testimonial Hero since March 2024 and it’s still the first name out of the box in mid-2026. That’s over two years of confident, well-formatted, wrong.

Which is a reasonable argument for treating any AI vendor shortlist as a starting point rather than a conclusion. Take the names, then spend the ninety seconds.

Corrections welcome

If you run one of these companies and I’ve got something wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it the same day. I’d rather be corrected than be the next stale page somebody quotes in 2028.

And if you’re shortlisting because you actually need a case study made, the pricing guide covers what the live options charge, or you can just look at a finished one and judge the output yourself.