Lithuanian startup ImpressPages has recently raised €200,000 to help accelerate their presence in the content management system (CMS) industry. So far the company has more than 42,000 registered users and now looking to increase that user base further.
ImpressPages works on the foundations of making development of websites more user friendly for those that aren’t IT savvy. The biggest USP for ImpressPages is the drag and drop functionality, and their ImpressPages open source platform offers developers a method of monetizing their customized plugins. The company stand by this and state, “There is absolutely no reason why development and management of a website has to be complicated. It has to be as simple as editing a text document, therefore market is ready for such a tool”.
So far ImpressPages has been translated into 32 different languages and with this seed funding from Venture Capitalists Practica Capital, they’re ready to expand their operations into new markets. The funding will primarily be used to improve the product features, and with the company priding itself on being “all about the community” the open source approach lends itself well to improving the application over the long-term. The company is definitely destine for big things as in 2011 ImpressPages won the Open Source Awards. This is a big deal in the CMS industry and shows the strength behind ImpressPages.
The CMS market is highly contested and WordPress manages an estimated 20% of all websites in existence today. Joomla and Drupal also have a strong following and stand in the way of ImpressPages march in the CMS market. ImpressPages however is growing substantially, with plans to add more functionality soon, such as an online store and cross platform integration for mobile devices. The online store will act as ImpressPages main revenue stream, which will essentially take a percentage share of each sale. The company has already taken steps to start their online store development by adding a new hire earlier this month.
ImpressPages appears to be headed in the right direction, and it will be interesting to see how effectively they can grow their business further after the conclusion from this seed round.
