TYPO3 SaaS: All You Need to Know!

Thanks to Sanjay fromNITSAN for sharing! 
Editor's note: This article is related to T3Terminal's blog.

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 in the prior fifteen years, this term was not commonly used - yet Google Trends information features the rapid increment in the notoriety of people looking for data on SaaS around the world:

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, 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.

According to this OpenSourceCMS.com 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

Source: https://www.opensourcecms.com/best-saas-based-content-management-systems/ 

So, what do you think, where can we (TYPO3) fit well in a SaaS-based CMS solution?

Yes! Because the SaaS platform solution is the ultimate goal for Closed Source CMS.

If we start looking at relative growth, we can see who the 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%.

Does this mean Open Source is on the decline?

At the beginning of 2018, the top 4 CMS 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 CMS (including all the sites that fit in the W3Techs “None” category, classified as Closed Source):

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 CMS 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.

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.

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

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
• 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

TYPO3 holds the potential and provides an increased number of features and tools to develop your SaaS based TYPO3 website. Besides, you can publish your website within no time. Isn't this cool?

TYPO3 SaaS can help several companies and business startups to design and develop a SaaS-based website at an affordable price. TYPO3 SaaS can be rich to non-technique customers, and also build a better TYPO3 eco-system. This initiative proves to provide a good start to your new business and accelerate the scope of expansion. 

Got any questions about TYPO3 SaaS? Post a comment and I’ll be happy to answer you.