Webzai

Webzai Ltd., established in July 2012, operated as a provider of a user-friendly, online HTML5 website building platform. The company was founded by Alon Gonen and Ilan Mishan. Gonen had previously founded and served as Managing Director for the financial trading platform Plus500, demonstrating significant experience in developing successful technology products. His background includes a degree in electrical engineering from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and a deep interest in product and business model development.

The firm targeted the small and medium-sized business (SMB) and freelancer markets with a drag-and-drop website editor that required no coding expertise from the user. Webzai's business model was structured as a freemium service. The complimentary offering provided users with up to 250 MB of storage and a Webzai subdomain, while premium packages offered expanded storage capacity up to 10,000 MB, unlimited bandwidth, and the ability to use custom domains. The platform's core product was a browser-based tool, eliminating the need for software downloads and allowing users to edit their sites from any computer. Key features included a range of professionally designed templates, a free-form editor for custom designs, and responsive design capabilities to ensure compatibility across desktops, tablets, and smartphones. The service was an all-in-one solution, bundling cloud hosting on Microsoft's Azure infrastructure with its website creation tools, meaning clients did not need to source separate hosting services.

In November 2014, just over two years after its founding, Webzai was acquired by Endurance International Group (EIG). The acquisition was part of a larger, $77 million deal that also included BuyDomains and Arvixe, marking a significant exit for the founders and a strategic consolidation in the web services market. Following this transaction, EIG itself underwent significant corporate changes, ultimately being acquired by private equity firm Clearlake Capital in a $3 billion deal that closed in February 2021. This led to the formation of Newfold Digital, a new entity combining Endurance's web presence division with Web.com.

Keywords: website builder, HTML5 editor, drag-and-drop tool, SMB web solutions, freelancer websites, freemium web hosting, cloud hosting, online platform, responsive design, no-code development, Alon Gonen, Endurance International Group acquisition, Newfold Digital, web presence, online business tools, website creation, Microsoft Azure hosting, custom domains, site builder