Wix.com is a cloud-based web development platform that was first developed and popularized by the Israeli company also called Wix. It allows users to create HTML5 web sites and mobile sites through the use of online drag and drop tools. Users may add functionality such as social plug-ins, e-commerce, contact forms, e-mail marketing, and community forums to their web sites using a variety of Wix-developed and third-party applications.
Wix is built on a freemium business model, earning its revenues through premium upgrades. Users must purchase premium packages in order to connect their sites to their own domains, remove Wix ads, add e-commerce capabilities, or buy extra data storage and bandwidth.
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History
Wix was founded in 2006 by Israelis Avishai Abrahami, Nadav Abrahami and Giora Kaplan. The company, headquartered in Tel Aviv, with offices in Be'er-Sheva, San Francisco, New York City, Dnipro, Kiev, and Vilnius, is backed by investors Insight Venture Partners, Mangrove Capital Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Benchmark Capital.
The company entered an open beta phase in 2007 using a platform based on Adobe Flash.
By April 2010 Wix had 3.5 million users and raised $10 million in Series C funding provided by Benchmark Capital and existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Mangrove Capital Partners. In March 2011, Wix had 8.5 million users and raised $40 million in Series D funding, bring its total funding to that date to $61 million. In April 2014, Wix announced its acquisition of Appixia, an Israeli startup for creating native mobile commerce (mCommerce) apps. In October 2014, Wix announced its acquisition of OpenRest, a developer of online ordering systems for restaurants.
On 23 February 2017, Wix acquired the online art community DeviantArt for $36 million.
Move to HTML5
In March 2012, Wix launched a new HTML5 site builder, replacing the Adobe Flash technology. Existing sites built in Flash continued to be supported, but all new customers were directed to the new HTML5 platform.
In February 2013, Wix reported that the move to HTML5 was highly successful, helping to attract 25 million users and generating annual revenues of $60 million in 2012.
By August 2013, the Wix platform had more than 34 million registered users. By 2014, the company reported 50 million users.
IPO on NASDAQ
On 5 November 2013, Wix had an initial public offering on NASDAQ, raising about $127 million for the company and some share holders.
Features
Wix provides customizable web site templates and a drag and drop HTML5 web site builder that includes apps, graphics, image galleries, fonts, and other options. Users also may opt to create their web sites from scratch. In October 2013 Wix introduced a mobile editor to allow users to adjust their sites for mobile viewing.
Wix app market
On October 2012, Wix launched an app market for users to sell applications built with the company's automated web development technology. Wix's software development kit lets app developers create and offer web apps to the millions of Wix users around the globe. Wix App Market offers both free and subscription-based applications, with a revenue split of 70 percent for the developer and 30 percent for Wix.
The App Market enables customers to integrate third-party applications into their own web sites, such as photograph feeds, blogging, music playlists, online community, e-mail marketing, and file management. Various applications are offered from providers such as Google, Instagram, LiveChat, Shopify, and Ecwid.
On 15 May 2014, Wix announced "WixHive API", which allows any installed Wix app within a user web site to capture and share their visitor data (such as contact information, messages, purchases and bookings) with other installed apps within the same web site. By sharing data, this gives Wix users more actionable information about their visitor behavior and can help grow businesses.
Other services
In August 2014, Wix launched Wix Hotels, a booking system for hotels, bed and breakfasts, and vacation rentals which use Wix websites. This was followed in 2015 by Wix Music, a platform for independent musicians to market and sell their music. and Wix Restaurants in 2016.
Acquisitions
- Appixia, a developer of a platfrom for building "mCommerce" apps, was acquired in March 2014.
- OpenRest, a provider of online ordering and mobile solutions for restaurants, was acquired in October 2014.
- Moment.me, a service building mobile websites for events and another marketing tool for social lead generation, was acquired in April 2015.
- Flok, a provider of customer loyalty programs tools, was acquired in January 2017.
- DeviantArt, an online community for art/design creators and enthusiasts, was acquired in February 2017.
Controversies
In October 2016, there was a controversy over Wix's use of WordPress GPL-licensed code. In response, Avishai Abrahami, Wix´s CEO, published an answer explaining which open source code was used and how Wix collaborates with the open source community. However, it was subsequently noted that collaboration with the open source community wasn't sufficient under the terms of the GPL license, which requires any code build on GPL-licensed code to be released under the same license.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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