Envato Sites is for users who are tired of dealing with WordPress, Joomla, server costs, or security patches

Nov 26, 2015 09:07 GMT  ·  By

Envato, the operator of several successful marketplaces such as ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, and AudioJungle, has announced a new project named Envato Sites, a classic site builder, in the same category of services provided by Wix or Squarespace.

The company announced it on November 15, but now, more details have emerged about the project, and as expected, the company's community will have a big role to play.

Envato Sites is meeting customer demands

Envato explained the decision to open a service that somewhat competes with ThemeForest as another way of fulfilling different customer skill levels.

While ThemeForest has been the undisputed leader in theme-selling marketplaces, customers still need some technical expertise to install the themes they buy there. If they have the skills to get a WordPress or Joomla site running, then server maintenance, security patches, or various other secondary costs eventually get them, and the by-then annoyed theme purchasers may decide to go with Squarespace, where everything is streamlined and simplified, at an extremely low cost.

It is this type of scenario that Envato wants to avoid, and instead of letting go of customers who are not willing to adapt to its business model, it's adapting the business model instead.

The good thing is that, instead of building a "classic" site builder where a small team of developers provides customization options and themes, Envato will be using its most powerful asset, its inestimable community of theme designers activating on ThemeForest. A decision that makes very much sense.

Envato Sites will be entering Beta very soon

The new service, Envato Sites, is set to launch next year, and current beta sign-ups are open. As for the technical side of things, after digging around on Envato's forums, we'll answer your most pressing question: no, it's not running on WordPress!

Justin French, Executive Product Manager for Envato Sites, says the new service will work on a custom platform, with React for the frontend, and Ruby on Rails underneath.

Themes will be designed by the ThemeForest community, and they'll have to follow a set of guidelines. Taking into account that each theme listed on ThemeForest already follows some guidelines, we don't expect authors not to be willing to adapt their themes to the new platform.

Since Envato employs reviewers for each of its marketplaces to weed out lower-end submissions, expect Envato Sites to feature the same level of quality themes you find on ThemeForest.

Envato Sites is said to provide no platform lock-in

Additionally, enhancing the platform with extra functionality via plugins is also a possibility, but Mr. French says that this "[i]s not a key focus for us yet," so don't expect a Swiss army knife from the get-go.

As a ThemeForest seller stated on the Envato support, this looks like a static site generator that will produce a combo of HTML, CSS, and JS files, which also explains why Mr. French said that "there’s no lock-in to our platform."

There's no word on the commission theme authors will receive, but the regular rate on ThemeForest is between 30 and 70%, depending on exclusivity and sales volume. As for the new service's success chances, Envato co-Founder Cyan Ta'eed said it best: "We live and die by our community."

Below is an image of the Envato Sites dashboard, which the development team leaked on Dribbble a few days ago.

Envato Sites: User, site editing dashboard
Envato Sites: User, site editing dashboard

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Envato readies to launch Envato Sites
Envato Sites: User, site editing dashboard
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