SynthaSite, a free website creation tool, recently received US$20 million in Series B funding from the Luxembourg-based Reinet Fund. The company's drag-and-drop technology and 60,000+ widgets lets small businesses and individuals easily create websites powered by a PayPal storefront.
The site has seen solid growth over the last year, growing from 10,000 users to more than a million. Founder Vinny Lingham expects to see radical growth this year as well.
"Even though the world economy is not looking good, the fundamentals of our business remain the same : People everywhere will need websites, today, tomorrow and in 5 years time -- when this depression is over!," he . "The funny thing is that our business is partially recession-proof, in that as people get retrenched, they start their own small businesses, and therefore need websites."
Several competing companies, such as and , are also doing relatively well. Wix raised . And Weebly, though profitable, is taking the "less-investment-is-better," strategy. To read what Weebly founder David Rusenko thinks of the $20 million SynthaSite just accepted, .
SynthaSite was founded in South Africa and now also has an office in San Francisco. Most of the technical team remains in Cape Town.