Website Building Platform Elementor Raises $15M

Israeli startup Elementor, the developer of a building platform for WordPress-based websites, announced on Wednesday that it raised $15 million in its first institutional funding round from leading US venture firm Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Elementor said in a statement that it is rapidly extending its market share, having recently surpassed four million sites built with its platform.

Founded in 2016 by entrepreneurs Yoni Luksenberg and Ariel Klikstein, Elementor’s open-source, drag-and-drop platform is available in 55 languages and is now adding more than one million sites built every six months, the company said. Its consumer base is mainly made up of web professionals including developers, designers, and marketers.

Elementor has both a free version and a number of pro options.

“What we have achieved, thanks to our dedicated team and wonderful community, has been truly extraordinary,” said Luksenberg, who serves as CEO. “In addressing a very real need, we have claimed a growing stake in a $300 billion market. With this round of funding, we accelerate our goal of allowing every web creator to easily build professional websites.” 

“Elementor’s growth is a wonderful example of the power of community and open-source software,” said Tal Morgenstern, partner at Lightspeed. “The founders set out to solve their own problems as web professionals and ended up with a global, highly-involved fan base that kept pushing and shaping the product from the very onset. Every single metric we looked at indicated an exceptionally strong market fit and we’re extremely happy to partner with this team for the next chapter of their journey.”

Elementor said it will use the funding to expand operations, grow its team, and gear up for major product launches that will “change the way websites are built,” the startup said.

WordPress powers over a third of the top 10 million sites on the web, according to a company announcement last March.

Meanwhile, Israeli-founded website building platform Wix is also a big player in the market and recently announced continued growth and total revenue of over $760 million for 2019.