On Oct 2019 at last TYPO3 Conference, Hague, with an exciting Launch of T3Planet First-ever TYPO3 Shop, One of our next dream vision & mission was TYPO3 SaaS.
We initiated working hard to build the world's first Click-n-launch TYPO3 website builder. And just within a span of a few months, Team T3Planet proudly introduced the dream venture TYPO3 SaaS.
Our team is really working hard for such a great SaaS platform initiative with OpenSource TYPO3 CMS. Especially, when other Commercial SaaS platforms are getting good pieces of CMS Market Share like Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, etc.
Do you know?
Commercial SaaS Shopify is now the world’s second most popular CMS.
I’m very excited to share the concept and reality, and all the what-how-why about TYPO3 SaaS. It’s interesting, let’s get ready to start!
As we are heading towards the end of the twentieth century, do you wonder what number of people might have used the term Software as a Service (SaaS)?
Indeed, even prior fifteen years, this term was not in like common use - yet Google Trends information features the rapid increment in the notoriety of people looking for data on SaaS around the world:
What number of SaaS organizations are there?
There are around 15,529 SaaS organizations all over the globe, as indicated by the data of SaaS organizations acquired from Crunchbase in June 2020. This figure likewise incorporates organizations established before 1998 that have progressed to give SaaS.
What is a SaaS CMS?
Software as a service (SaaS) is a software distribution model in which a third-party provider hosts applications and makes them available to customers over the Internet.
When it comes to adopting a Web CMS (Content Management System), a customer has three options:
Option #1 Build
You could rely on your development team and build your own, bespoke CMS from the ground up, or on top of open source platforms. This road is long, costly, potentially buggy, and full of ongoing maintenance.
Option #2 Buy
You could buy a CMS from a respected software vendor, and this has traditionally been the best option for most brands. However, prices are high, deployment time is long and you may be left to your own devices unless you pay hefty support fees to the vendor.
Option #3 Borrow
Imagine using software that you don’t have to buy and move in-house. It exists in the cloud, allowing you and your team to log in and operate from anywhere. All the while, the vendor maintains the software, handles the hosting, and deals with all your support queries, all for a monthly or yearly fee. That’s SaaS (Software as a Service).
A SaaS CMS offers you similar features to your current self-installed CMS.
But, instead of being installed locally, you’re relying on the cloud to offer you a distributed CMS, which can be configured to your unique website needs.
More than 50% of SaaS Platforms are built under a CMS!
Unsurprisingly, the most popular solution used within the cloud 100 is WordPress (35%) and then comes Drupal (17%) and Adobe (7%).
The trend of SaaS platforms is followed by CMS (51.5%), Javascript (24.2%), and PHP (7.1%) so on.
X-axis: company size (# of employees); Y-axis: # of SaaS products used
Which are Most Popular SaaS-based CMS?
According to Opensource CMS blog post, the most popular SaaS-based CMS are as follows:
- Best Overall SaaS CMS – WordPress
- Best SaaS CMS for eCommerce – Shopify, BigCommerce, and Magento
- Best SaaS CMS for Small Business – WordPress and Joomla
- Best SaaS CMS for Beginners – Squarespace and Wix
So, What do you think, where can we (TYPO3) fit well in a SaaS-based CMS solution?
Web CMS Market Share
What about CMS Marketshare? Unfortunately, TYPO3 is not even in the top 10 CMS. Take a quick look at the below report, where TYPO3 CMS is continuously losing CMS market share since mid of 2019.
TYPO3 Marketshare: Last Year
TYPO3 Statistics: 2011 to 2020
Do you know?
Sad-fact about TYPO3 CMS Market Share.
“TYPO3 had (4.2%) in 2010, but now in 2020 it’s 0.3%”.
Google’s Trends Report on TYPO3
Why is WordPress the most popular SaaS CMS?
Here is something I personally believe that “WordPress’s growth and popularity are not only because it's a good CMS but it's a strong ecosystem.
This includes a large-level of diversity for options in Plugins, Themes, Hosting, Developers, Professional Support & Education, etc. and specifically website ready-to-launch with WordPress SaaS platform(s).
Here are some facts and figures:
- In total, there are over 74,500,000 websites using WordPress, with about half of these hosted as a free/paid solution at WordPress.com - means WordPress SaaS.
- WordPress.com users produce about 136.2 million new posts and 77.7 million new comments each month.
- WordPress.com calls themselves as WordPress SaaS and receives over 20,000 support requests in an average month.
- Twitter was embedded on WordPress.com sites over 200,000 times last month.
WordPress.com (the hosted version of the WordPress software) currently attracts more unique views per month than Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, Twitter, etc.,
OpenSource vs ClosedSource SaaS CMS
Is SaaS-based ClosedSource CMS growing?
Yes! Because the SaaS platform solution is the ultimate goal for Closed-Source CMS.
If we start looking at relative growth, we can see new competitors really are. As soon as you start looking at relative growth for the top 20, three systems jump out:
- Squarespace, which grew 114%.
- Wix, which grew 150%.
- Weebly, which grew 120%.
Means, Is Open source on the decline?
At the beginning of 2018, the top 4 CMSs by market share in the world were all open source: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and Magento.
So I also drive-in and checked whether Open Source as a whole was losing or winning.
The numbers are clear, based on the top 25 CMSs (including all the sites that fit in the W3Techs “None” category, classified as closed source):
2018 | 2019 | Forecast 2020 | |
Open Source CMS | 37.8% | 41.0% | 44.9% |
Closed Source CMS | 57.1% | 53.0% | 51.7% |
On the whole, Open Source market share is growing tremendously, but really only because of WordPress and a little bit of help from Prestashop. I think this is a worrying matter. We’re losing diversity in the CMS market and with it, we’re losing open-source alternatives.
Financial ramifications
Consider this:
- Shopify expects to do about $1.578 billion in revenue in 2019, with a 2.5% market share.
- Wix expects to do about $0.761 billion in revenue in 2019, with a 1.4% market share.
- Squarespace reportedly had 300 million USD in revenue in 2017, when it was still much smaller.
I think it’s not unfair to extrapolate these numbers for these CMSs and compare them to WordPress’s 33% market share.
If we do that then WordPress as a whole is true, as Matt (founder of WordPress) said in his State of the Word, a $10 billion industry. In fact when he says that he might even be on the low side.
TYPO3 International growth strategy with PaaS & SaaS
At the end of 2019, Mathias (TYPO3 GmbH), Daniel (DFAU GmbH) & I started to think about the TYPO3 SaaS solution, Thanks for your brainstorming and ideas.
The opportunities and chances of delivering platform services for TYPO3 professionals and accessible TYPO3 services for users worldwide.
Scope
Reaching out for a significant worldwide market share sounds ambitioned. Yet the idea of raising worldwide visibility for TYPO3 by increasing its user base is key.
The idea of growing internationally through TYPO3 as a trusted CMS is at the core of PaaS & SaaS.
Source: https://typo3.com/
A high density of TYPO3 agencies in Europe speaks for itself. There is a need for international growth for TYPO3 as a business opportunity.
SaaS - Software As A Service
With TYPO3 SaaS, Users will experience TYPO3 CMS without deeper knowledge of integration and development can start with TYPO3 with complete ease.
Benefits
- Website Solutions as monthly plans / reliable costs
- Introducing a wide range of people with unique requirements to TYPO3
- Alternative to proprietary systems as well as open-source competitors
- Sustainable business opportunities for TYPO3 related companies
Principles
- Easy to build and publish a TYPO3 website in minutes
- Optimization of Security, Performance, SEO, Marketing tools, etc
- Support & Education
TYPO3 SaaS Business: Chances and Risks
The enormous potential is at hand. Let’s have a look at the business we are talking about:
Let’s assume WordPress really has 33% of all webpages, so
- 1.5 billion * 0.33 – let’s round it up to 500 million
- And they grew 4 % over a year
- That’s 19 million-plus …
- if a TYPO3 PaaS/SaaS only could grow 1% of this we would end up serving 190.000 Websites.
Risks
- Users are unwilling to adopt a new platform
- Marketing efforts could be underestimated
- By the time it’s difficult to handle the growth of requirements (support/maintenance) or the growth at all
- Doesn’t work: total loss of investment
Chances
- Increased market share will also increase the demand for TYPO3 professionals & agencies
- High potential markets are developed faster and more efficient
- The TYPO3 Brand will get more visible and bring a positive effect to enterprise business
- Exponential growth for TYPO3 Website Builder is possible
How will TYPO3 get benefits with SaaS?
How a true cloud web content management solution expedites digital marketing initiatives.
TYPO3 Market share
Our major goal is to increase the TYPO3 market share by grabbing this ultimate solution: SaaS + TYPO3.
TYPO3 Eco-system
Make a better and strong TYPO3 eco-system.
TYPO3 Internationalization
We will get good opportunities to attract International users. It’ll help to spread the TYPO3 to the global.
TYPO3 Community
The TYPO3 OpenSource community will get bootstrap to grow by new TYPO3 users.
How will TYPO3 SaaS help to Customers?
Costs are kept Low
As SaaS CMS is based on a subscription model, there is no large licensing fee upfront. Generally, a SaaS CMS project entails a small setup fee that covers up basic website implementation.
IT Staff Unburdened
No longer IT assistance from your internal resource is required. Instead, your SaaS vendor will take care of any upgrades, maintenance, and issue, and at no additional cost.
Accessible
SaaS CMS being a virtual product can usually be accessed from any computer, tablet, or mobile device with an available internet connection.
Easily Add-On More Users and More Sites
Easy scale up or scale down of plan and add new users as your team and content needs growth. Adding more sites is as easy as a click on the button as you want to spin up new sites — microsites, campaign sites, landing pages, etc. Only pay for what you use.
Up-to-Date Software
With SaaS, you can count on new features being added in real-time. The latest features and innovations are typically available to all users at no additional costs.
Security
As your SaaS vendor handles all the development and QA, no need to worry about malware or buggy add-ons to the CMS.
Support Included
SaaS vendors are extra motivated to resolve all reported issues promptly and effectively with a multi-tenant architecture, if an issue is affecting one customer. This also means that you get to benefit from issues found by other users of the SaaS CMS, leading to a more robust CMS for all.
Implementation Speed
Launching a new website is faster with deployed CMS in underlying cloud infrastructure. No need of required setup & configuration for Dev, QA, and Production sites. Proving to be faster than traditional web and mobile app development.
TYPO3 SaaS @ T3Planet
We are having a tried-tested robust successful platform with our TYPO3 Shop venture. And, a bit sure that, we will achieve the same with TYPO3 SaaS.
Build a TYPO3 website in minutes!
Take a look at our TYPO3 SaaS solution, I’m sure you will love it.
Why TYPO3 SaaS at T3Planet?
“Just focus on your business, and we will take care of your website”.
Plans & Pricing
We have very low and competitive pricing to create your cost-effective website.
Start Your Free-Trial Now!
To get trust and real experience, we recommend having Free test-drive of TYPO3 SaaS solution for 15 days at https://t3planet.com/typo3-saas
Summing-up!
Thanks for reading such a long TYPO3 article.
I hope you like, learn, and explore the TYPO3 SaaS solution. Let’s have a quick recap.
- Understand the fundamentals and architecture of SaaS CMS.
- Case study the Market share of SaaS CMS with Open-Source vs Closed-Source.
- Facts and Figures on web SaaS CMS Platforms.
- Benefits of TYPO3 SaaS, Proof-of-concept to grow TYPO3 Internationally with TYPO3 SaaS solution.
- Explore the Click-n-launch TYPO3 SaaS solution at T3Planet.
We heartily welcome you at the T3Planet TYPO3 Shop platform to share your feedback, suggestions, or ideas. Feel free to write down your questions in the comment box below.
Sanjay Chauhan
CTO at T3Planet & NITSANSanjay Chauhan, Co-Founder of NITSAN (Award winning TYPO3 agency) and Pioneer of T3Planet (first-ever TYPO3 Shop).
A true TYPO3 fanatic since 2010. I bring strong TYPO3 experience in building customer-business…
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