GrapesJS creator founds Grapes Studio Inc. to bring the open-source, multi-project, no-code website editor mainstream
Open Core Ventures (OCV) is proud to announce the launch of Grapes Studio, a no-code editor built on the open-source framework GrapesJS. Led by GrapesJS creator, Artur Arseniev, Grapes Studio will build on the GrapesJS open-source core to create a SaaS application for the popular framework. “The OCV model works best when we can work directly with the creator of the open-source project as we’re mutually aligned on the long-term success of the company and the open-source project,” said Betty Ma, COO at OCV. “We’re thrilled to have Artur onboard as CTO and looking forward to seeing where he takes the product.” In addition to Grapes Studio, Artur plans to build Studio SDK, an embeddable version of Grapes Studio. Both are multi-purpose editors that bring all web-related needs into a single interface from website creation to newsletters, invoicing, and more.
The growth of e-commerce and digital transformation has increased the demand for businesses and individuals to have an online presence, and the low-code/no-code web builder market is rapidly evolving to meet that demand. The low-code market is currently estimated at $6.78 billion and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of around 22.9% by 2030. “There’s great market potential for an open-source low-code web builder,” said Sid Sijbrandij, General Partner at OCV. “Unlike competitors, Grapes can meet any user where they are, whether that’s someone with no coding experience who needs to create a single website for a business or someone who has years of experience building websites and needs something highly customizable.” Grapes Studio bridges the gap between highly inflexible low-code editors that make it simple for someone with no coding experience to build a website and highly customizable low-code editors that are hard to use. “
With funding from OCV, Artur aims to build a better alternative to existing what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors to make web development more accessible to the general public. “The vision is to make web development more accessible,” said Artur. “People struggle every day to make websites even with many low-code and no-code options on the market. The difference with Grapes is that it’s extendable—you can manage everything web-related, whether it’s your website, invoices, landing pages, or something else.”
Artur plans to hire a small team of engineers to improve the open-source core and evolve GrapesJS framework to an enterprise-ready no-code website building suite.
Multi-purpose, low-code web builder
Grapes’ multi-purpose editor brings all your web-based projects into a single editor so you can edit your website, e-commerce site, newsletter, or blog all in one place. Users can embed and customize Grape’s editor thanks to its open API and extendable framework making it one of the most flexible no-code editors available. “It’s tweakable, hackable, and easily customized,” said Artur. “If you have zero coding experience you can just drag and drop components. Then the more proficient you become with the GrapesJS framework the more you can customize it.”
Unlike proprietary no-code editors like Squarespace and Webflow, Grapes is framework agnostic. It doesn’t lock users into specific frameworks or have limited customization options. Instead, GrapesJS offers a framework-agnostic approach that supports a range of use cases. “React is the most popular framework but people also use Vue and Angular but the three don’t play nice together,” said Artur. “GrapesJS can work with any of those frameworks. I think it’s important to stay close to industry standards rather than specific frameworks because things can change quickly. You don’t want to get stuck with something that has become outdated. Or unpopular.”
The API-first editor allows for extensive customization and integration into various platforms. “Businesses can integrate the framework into their software, customizing it to their needs with different components and aesthetics. This flexibility makes it suitable for individual developers and businesses looking to incorporate a highly customizable web editor into their software products.
Sustaining open source
Grapes Studios’ founder, open source creator-turned-CTO Artur Arseniev, started GrapesJS nearly a decade ago after encountering an issue at work: “We created newsletter templates for clients and anytime they needed a change it had to be hardcoded by us,” said Artur. “There were rich text editors, and those work great for simple things like a blog post but if you need to create a full page layout, they aren’t well oriented for that so I started prototyping something.” He called the project Grapes because it mimics a bunch of grapes: “You have singular grapes that form a bunch,” said Artur. “GrapesJS combines and reuses many parts to create the final template.”
The prototype quickly started to evolve into a framework that could allow others to create editors for their software platforms. “I wanted it to be customizable so it switched from an application to a framework,” said Artur. Transitioning to creating an open-source framework turned out to be a boon to the project as it attracted contributors interested in using it in their products. “People using the framework to embed the editor contributed the most to the project,” said Artur.
Now that Artur can work on GrapesJS full-time, he can work on building out the application as Grapes Studio and offering the full studio as an embedded option. “Without funding there just isn’t enough time to build the version you want to build,” said Artur. “I always enjoyed working on it and had ambitious goals. From the perspective of time, it always felt unrealistic. Trying to live off of savings or bootstrap wasn’t really an option for me. Funding the project with OCV allows me to work full-time on something I believe in.”