Contentstack Inc., the maker of a so-called headless content management system used by the likes of HP Inc. and Broadcom Inc., has raised an $57.5 million funding round led by prolific tech investor Insight Partners.

Canadian investment firm Georgian Partners contributed as well along with Contentstack’s existing backers. The oversubscribed round, which was announced this morning, comes two years after Contentstack’s previous raise.

The startup has expanded its market presence considerably since then: It claims that revenue is up 150%, off an undisclosed base, thanks partly to a sizable jump in the number of Fortune 500 enterprises using its software.

“The company’s outstanding results were fueled by unprecedented market demand for powerful digital experiences due to the pandemic, as businesses were compelled to deliver content-rich digital interactions across the spectrum,” said Contentstack founder and Chief Executive Officer Neha Sampat (pictured).

Companies use content management systems to orchestrate the product listings, articles, technical support resources and other content on their websites. A typical CMS provides two main sets of features. The first set of features is for performing backend tasks such as authoring articles and scheduling them to publish at a later date, while the other set focuses on customizing how the content appears to users on a company’s website.

CMS platforms are also used for managing content across other channels, for example a company’s mobile app and in-store kiosks. 

The challenge headless platforms such as Contentstack’s offering aim to address is that enterprises often need to use separate CMS products for each channel through which they publish content. That means developers must maintain multiple pieces of software to support operations. The process of releasing new content is also complicated because items such as help desk articles often have to be formatted differently across a company’s website, apps and other channels, which in many cases requires custom code. 

The more channels there are, the more time the task takes up for a company’s software engineers. This can add up significant overhead for enterprises such as e-commerce companies that may update their digital content upwards of thousands of times a month.

Contentstack’s namesake platform streamlines the workflow by removing the need to use separate CMS products for different channels. Instead, companies can manage all their content in Contentstack and centrally distribute it to the various channels they use to target customers.

The platform provides a collection of development tools that allow software engineers to automate many of the manual tasks normally involved in distributing content. Engineers can create workflows to perform actions such as resizing the size of article images across a company’s website, mobile apps and newsletters. The platform publishes the content via application programming interfaces that are relatively simple to connect to systems such as a mobile app backend or a newsletter distribution service.

Contentstack said today that it plans to draw on the artificial intelligence know-how of new investor Georgian to help it build machine learning features into the platform. In the go-to-market arena, the startup plans to focus more heavily on driving international growth and will bring on more channel partners to support customer acquisition efforts.

Contentstack’s rivals include Strapi Solutions SAS, a France- and San Francisco-based startup that raised $10 million last year for its competing headless CMS. 

Photo: Contentstack