About the company

Location: 708 Gravenstein Hwy. N. #162 , Sebastopol, California 95472, United States flags/United States.gif
Founded in: 2007
Stage: 1.0 (formal launch)
Number of employees: 1-5
Profitable year: 2010
Short URL: http://vator.tv/c/1140
Profile creation: September 16, 2009
Last updated: December 24, 2009

Categories

Business to Business, Internet Web 2.0, Software as a Service

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Followers (700)


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Tags

cms, content, management, web, design, hosting, development, information, portal, hosted, service, saas,

Webvanta

Database-driven web sites without programming
Startup/business
flags/United States.gif California, United States
http://www.webvanta.com

Webvanta is hosted content management system that enables designers to deliver sites with powerful back-end capabilities, without having to contract with a programmer. We believe that web site creation will move to a SaaS model, and that the existing hosted CMS offerings are either too simple or far too expensive.

Webvanta offers the power of a CMS such as Drupal, with the ease of use of a hosted service like Wordpress.com. As a fully-supported, integrated solution, we provide a higher-quality, easier-to-use environment for both web designers and site owners.

Webvanta gives designers all the tools they need to make their sites look exactly how they want, using the same HTML and CSS tools they are accustomed to, while making it easy for the designers' clients to maintain the site. It is the first such service to make it truly simple for a front-end designer to incorporate custom database structures and sophisticated back-end features.

 

Latest updates

700 Followers see details »
18048
Michael Slater (President & CEO)
We've just closed our Series A financing -- many thanks to our customers, investors, staff, and friends! http://www.webvanta.com/post/51030-webvanta-series-a-financing-closed on December 17
18048
Michael Slater (President & CEO)
We're presenting tonight at SF New Tech. Come on down if you're in SF, lots of interesting stuff there. Tickets here: http://bit.ly/FA9pW on November 18
Thumbs_up_green Hasan Luongo, Bambi Francisco liked this update
18048
Michael Slater (President & CEO)
A few months ago, we volunteered to help build a new site for West County Health Centers (www.wchealth.org). We got them started, and then the staff and interns built an impressive site. A small team of dedicated (but non-technical) folks can built a rich site with Webvanta. on October 25
18048
Michael Slater (President & CEO)
A new Webvanta site: www.alkemieicecream.com It was a big upgrade from their blog-based site for this startup dairy-free ice cream maker. on October 22

Business model

Webvanta is free for web designers. There's no charge as long as the site is in development.

When the site becomes public, the monthly hosting fee is $19 to $99, which may be marked up by the designer or paid directly by the site owner.

We also offer optional training and customization services for web designers.

 

Competitive advantage

Today, most web designers need to add thousands of dollars to the project cost to provide a CMS solution, especially if the project requires a custom database structure. Webvanta eliminates this cost and enables designers to deliver better sites at lower cost and with less pain.

Compared with other hosted CMS solutions, such as Wordpress.com or CushyCMS.com, Webvanta offers far more power and back-end capability. We can also implement custom back-end features as needed, and the service is fully documented and supported.

Compared with self-hosted systems, such as Drupal and Joomla, Webvanta eliminates all the pain of managing a server, keeping up with software updates and security patches, backups, monitoring, and so forth. (See Webvanta compared with Drupal)

Compared with open-source solutions, Webvanta offers designers a fully supported, integrated solution that makes their job easier. See Webvanta and Open Source.

 

Management Bio

Michael Slater, CEO, has 30 years experience creating successful startups. He was most recently Director of Research at Adobe Systems. He was previously Chairman of Fotiva, a venture-backed software company that was acquired by Adobe in 2001. Prior to Fotiva, he was founder of Microprocessor Report, which he sold to Ziff-Davis.

Christopher Haupt, CTO, is a software architect and developer with more than 25 years experience in both startups and established companies. At Adobe, he most recently was Director of Engineering for the consumer online services group, and also led the Photoshop Extended engineering team.

 

IP and defensibility

Webvanta's system is based on a proprietary software layer on top of a variety of open-source technologies, including Ruby on Rails, nginx, Linux, and MySQL.

 Our defensibility is based largely on our understanding of designer needs, ability to craft a streamlined and high-performance system, and the tight relationships with our designer customers.

 

Feedback and testimonials


7 ratings | 1 testimonial | 700 followers | 3517 views
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Content playlist
Now_playing
Site Owner's Intro to Webvanta (for designers' clients)
Posted: September 29, 2009
(166 views)
Introduction to Webvanta
Posted: September 16, 2009
(62 views)

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