Strapi Solutions SAS, a France- and San Francisco-based startup taking on WordPress in the content management system market, today announced that it has raised a $10 million round of funding led by Index Ventures.

The round follows a $4 million seed investment last October that saw the participation of Docker creator Solomon Hykes. In the seven months between the two deals, Strapi has seen downloads of its namesake open-source CMS double to more than a million. IBM Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and NASA are among the organizations that now use the software in production.

One of the features that has helped Strapi’s platform gain market traction is that it’s a so-called “headless” CMS. A traditional CMS such as WordPress provides features for managing both content and the presentation of the website on which that content is displayed. A headless CMS, in contrast, only provides features for managing content, allowing developers to employ other technologies to handle the presentation. 

The main benefit of this approach is customizability. Large companies with complex web design requirements can use Strapi alongside their choice of external development technologies, which provides more options than using a single platform both for managing and presenting content. Moreover, Strapi itself can be customized thanks to the fact that it’s open-source software.

Strapi will use the new $10 million to support commercialization efforts. The startup is readying a paid enterprise edition of its CMS that will include security features such as audit logs and role-based access control, along with extra publication tools. Additionally, Strapi is working on paid plugins for “product and marketing teams managing content at scale.”

The startup will also invest some of the funding in speeding up development work on the core open-source version. Strapi plans to build out the certain commonly requested features, as well as invest in better documentation and tutorials for developers.

Photo: Strapi