(Ping! Zine Web Tech Magazine) - BaseKit, the website building platform, today announced that it has secured a further $3m in expansion capital, bringing the total investment this year to $10m.
This capital adds to the total investment in BaseKit, which currently stands at $25m, positioning the company as one of the fastest growing website building platforms.
The website building industry has gained significant market recognition as a disruption to the traditional web hosting business, and recent investment has enabled these businesses to develop their product offering. Weebly has raised $35m in funding this April, Squarespace a further $40m, and Israeli based firm Wix raised $127m in its IPO towards the end of last year.
Juan Lobato, CEO BaseKit, says: “We are positive about BaseKit’s future. This investment accelerates the creation of our global footprint of partners. Itcomes at an important time as we are launching our developer community and opening up our platform to web professionals.”
BaseKit’s further investment follows the appointment of Thomas Vollrath as a board director. Vollrath was formerly CEO of Host Europe Group, the largest privately owned hosting group in Europe, and parent company to the likes of 123-reg, the UK’s largest hosting firm.
Vollrath said: “Momentum is what attracted me to BaseKit. Hosting providers have to cater to the multiple needs of SMB’s online presence and BaseKit meets that need. Many market players have chosen to go directly to the end user, however BaseKit has been able to create an international reach, across 26 countries and in 16 languages, through its partnerships with hosting providers.”
According to a recent report by Parallells¹, the web presence industry is expected to grow by almost 50% from $10.1bn in 2012 to $16.3bn in 2015, with a value of$6.3bn in Europe alone. The recent investment we have seen in the website-building industry supports these predictions and highlights this as a market opportunity for growing businesses.
About BaseKit:
BaseKit was founded in 2008 and has become the world’s fastest growing website editor, distributed by global partners in the hosting and telecoms space. The platform enables small businesses and designers to build and manage beautiful websites entirely in the browser. BaseKit’s website editor is available in 16 languages and multiple integrations are supported, including: On-premise, SaaS, cPanel plugin and Parallels APS.
BaseKit now has over 80 employees, with offices in London, Bristol, Toronto, and Sao Paulo, with over 100 strategic partnerships worldwide. BaseKit won Seedcamp in 2008 and has subsequently received investment from Eden Ventures, NESTA andNauta Capital.