It’s time for marketers to have more control over their company’s websites, says the team behind Makeswift.
Instead of relying on engineering teams to make template updates or manage pages, the Atlanta-based platform envisions a digital world in which the hard coded websites are out while headless and composable ones are in. The startup gives marketers and non-technical team members of a team the ability to use a visual builder for next.js websites, an open-source web development framework gaining popularity.
“Makeswift is a great fit for companies whose websites play a big part in their customer’s journey to conversion and require regular updates and optimization,” says co-founder Lindsay Trinkle. “For these companies, the total cost of ownership of the website is relatively high because of the engineering resources required to make any changes to the website and the bottlenecked workflows between marketing, design, and engineering.”
The Atlanta startup wants to untangle the workflow between the marketing and engineering teams, which will empower non-technical teams to create the most effective websites for their specific product needs.
Early adopters of the platform include tech conference RenderATL and Atlanta-based startup Monetizr.
Funding Makeswift
Makeswift is one of several startups making waves in the growing No-Code space, a branch of software development that allows users to create something without programming knowledge.
The number of VC deals in the No-Code/Low-Code space has grown fivefold over the last few years, according to analytics company GlobalData.
Makeswift just announced a new $3 million investment that CEO Alan Pledger said will give the startup a “solid plan to become profitable” in the next year.
“We believe that Makeswift is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing trend of companies moving away from Wordpress to frameworks like Next.js for their marketing sites. We are excited to support the company in its next phase of growth,” said Active Capital’s CEO and founder Pat Matthews.
The latest round of investment is from a mixture of local and national investors. The round was led by Texas-based Active Capital, with participation from Uncommon Capital and Atlanta-based Silicon Road Ventures.
“It is tough out there [fundraising] but we’ve been really lucky to have continued backing by our lead VC, Pat Matthews of Active Capital. With his support we’ve been able to navigate this climate with much more ease than if we had gone at it alone,” added Trinkle.
The Makeswift team is currently made up of 7 full-timers, though they are looking to expand with engineers who have experience in React and Next.js.
