The internet has fundamentally reshaped our world, creating two parallel yet interconnected realms: the physical and the digital. As we navigate this dual existence, websites have become an essential tool for operating in the digital sphere. A website serves as a digital storefront, business card, and megaphone all rolled into one. Today, having an online presence is expected and essential for businesses and individuals alike. Yet for many, the process of creating a professional website remains a challenge. The task of building a polished, effective website quickly and efficiently continues to be a costly and complex affair for those lacking specialized skills or resources.
Picture this: You're a small business owner, a freelance photographer, or perhaps an emerging non-profit. You know you need a website, but the whole affair of creating one makes you nervous. You're faced with a dizzying array of options, each seemingly more complex than the last. Each one comes with a certain cost.
On one end of the spectrum, you have the DIY website builders—the Wixes and Squarespaces of the world. They promise simplicity but often deliver cookie-cutter results that all look the same. On the other end, you have custom web development – a route that can put additional pressure on your bank account.
In between these extremes lies WordPress, the Swiss Army knife of content management systems. It powers nearly 40% of all websites on the internet, a testament to its flexibility and power. But with great power comes great complexity, and many users find themselves lost in a labyrinth of plugins, themes, and widgets.
Enter Templately, the WordPress plugin and SaaS-based cloud platform that makes building WordPress websites easy and accessible to anyone and everyone. Created and owned by Startise, the Dhaka-based global technology conglomerate, the platform is quietly revolutionizing the way WordPress websites are built, one template at a time.
Simply put, Templately is a solution that allows you to make your website without going to an agency or web developer. You can call it a one-stop solution for creating and designing websites. Using Templately, you can create a website in 5-10 minutes. The platform has a wide range of templates and designs, choose the one you like, make a few clicks and you have your WordPress website. No technical skills necessary.
The platform offers two options: free and paid. While the paid tier comes with added benefits, the company says its free tier has ample templates and designs that should be sufficient for most people. A majority of its over 3.5 lakh users are free users.
Templately mainly works for the WordPress ecosystem. Originally started by supporting Elementor builder, a widely popular WordPress builder, Templately now supports both Elementor and WordPress’s native builder Gutenberg.
The way the platform works is simple: go to Templately website, install Templately plugin, choose a template you want to use, install it in your WordPress website and you are good to go. In some ways, Templately can be called a template platform similar to many template marketplaces such as Envato, where you can find various types of templates and choose the ones you prefer. The only difference is that all Templately designs are done in-house by the Templately team and it doesn’t allow/sell third party templates.
With over 5,500 templates and counting, Templately offers more design options than any other comparable platforms. Whether you're a yoga instructor looking for a zen-like online presence or a heavy metal band wanting a website that screams louder than your guitar solos, or a new crypto platform, Templately's got you covered.
But Templately isn't merely a massive library of pretty designs. The platform has added features that make collaboration easier. Its "My Cloud" and "Workspace" features turn web design into a team sport.
Emerged from a simple yet powerful idea of making website creation accessible to non-technical users, Templately positions itself as a bridge between complex web development and the average user's need for an online presence. Templately democratizes web design in a way that makes web design accessible to everyone.
In this article, we take a deep dive into the Templately story. We explore the origin and evolution of Templately, what separates it from other similar solutions, its operational dynamics, how the platform is turning the WordPress ecosystem on its head, and fundamentally changing WordPress website creation.
The idea for Templately was born out of a simple yet profound observation by M Asif Rahman, founder of Startise. Rahman recognized a fundamental challenge in website creation: the process was often too complex, time-consuming, and costly for many non-technical users. As Rahat Hossain, a team member, recounts:
"Startise Founder M Asif Rahman first came up with the idea of Templately. He thought about the challenges people face when it comes to building websites. There are many different aspects to building a website from technical development to design and so on. He thought about how we could make this entire process simple and easy for even non-tech people where they could use some ready-made templates, and designs with ready content, customize as needed, and build his/her online presence in the shortest possible time."
This insight led to a crucial question: How could the website-building process be simplified to the point where anyone could create a professional-looking site in minutes? Thus the Templately team got to work to find a solution.
The journey from concept to product was not without its challenges. The Templately team embarked on an ambitious technical roadmap. Rahat explains:
"I still remember that Asif bhai held a meeting with all of us and asked whether we could build it. Afterward, we spent days researching the whole thing. We figured out that we could do it but would need huge design, tech, and content support to make it happen. We also made some tech decisions: Graph QL for the backend, React Net JS framework for the front end, etc. These were difficult decisions because most of us were not that familiar with these technologies. We had to go through a massive learning curve."
The Templately team's willingness to climb steep learning curves in service of their vision would prove crucial in the long run.
Once the product was finally ready, Templately's market entry strategy leveraged the company's existing strengths in the WordPress ecosystem.
Nahid Hasan, another team member, elaborates:
"We are a WordPress-focused company. We have a few SaaS products but we are mostly a WordPress ecosystem company. We have been familiar with the Elementor ecosystem for a long time. We have a product called Essential Addon, which has over 2.5 million users."
Templately initially targeted Elementor users. By targeting a specific, accessible market segment first, Templately could refine its product and build momentum. Since Startise already had a strong presence in the Elementor ecosystem, it helped Templately gain a ready user base quickly. The initial positive response was extremely helpful in motivating the Templately team. It made them believe that the product would work, leading to continuous push and innovations.
The platform has since evolved. Nahid states:
"We started with some 100+ templates. We now have over 5,500 templates on our platform. With more than half of the templates built specifically for Elementor, the users of the builder are greatly facilitated by the ready website designs. We also support the default WordPress builder, Gutenberg."
This rapid scaling was driven by a virtuous cycle of user feedback and agile development. The team's ability to quickly respond to user requests for new template categories demonstrated the kind of customer-centric innovation that often distinguishes successful companies from the rest.
With a growing prominence, Templately team has focused on continuously outperforming other similar platforms in the market. The team has always focused on introducing new features and tools to improve the user experience on the platform.
Templately's introduction of collaborative features like My Cloud and Workspace represents a move up the value chain. Tasnia Rahman, another team member, explains:
"Apart from templates, we have two collaborative features on Templately: My Cloud and Workspace where someone can create, upload and save a design, and then share it with his team, even outside of Templately."
By enabling team collaboration, Templately positions itself not just as a template cloud platform, but as an integral part of the web development workflow for businesses and agencies.
These are important features and bear critical strategic importance. By aggregating a vast array of templates and making them easily accessible through a user-friendly interface, Templately positions itself as the go-to platform for website creation.
Nahid emphasizes this unique selling point:
"One major distinction is that no other platforms have the range and collection of the templates we have. We have over 5,500 templates and no one else has this number of templates."
This strategy could lead to a powerful growth flywheel: more templates and advanced features mean more users coming to Templately, as more users join the platform, Templately can gather more data on design preferences and user needs, further improving its offerings and attracting even more users.
Rahat describes their approach to continuous innovation:
"We regularly develop new templates based on customer requests. We have crypto-related templates. We have templates related to Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Because our users requested these templates. And these proved to be the most in demand in the market based on our research. This is how we release new templates. We are always looking to add new templates and new categories that are useful to our users."
At its core, Templately offers a value proposition that resonates with a broad audience: the ability to create a professional-looking website in minutes, without the need for coding skills or design expertise.
This approach taps into a significant market need, particularly among small businesses, freelancers, and individuals who lack the resources for custom web development.
The platform's integration with WordPress, particularly its compatibility with popular page builders like Elementor and the native Gutenberg editor, positions it strategically within the WordPress ecosystem. With WordPress powering over 800 million websites globally, Templately's potential market is vast and growing.
While templates form the backbone of Templately's offering, the company's true innovation lies in its collaborative features. The "My Cloud" and "Workspace" functionalities transform Templately from a mere template repository into a collaborative design platform. This shift is significant, aligning the product with broader trends in remote work and distributed teams.
The ability for multiple users to collaborate on designs in real time addresses a critical pain point in web development workflows. It's a feature that sets Templately apart in a crowded marketplace and hints at the company's ambitions beyond a simple template marketplace or cloud solution.
While the template marketplace or SaaS industry is undoubtedly crowded, Templately has managed to carve out a significant niche for itself. This success can be attributed to a combination of user-centric features, clear benefits, and strong differentiators that set it apart from competitors.
Key Features
By leveraging these features and differentiators, Templately has positioned itself not just as another template provider, but as a comprehensive solution for web design within the WordPress ecosystem.
The platform's success in attracting and retaining users suggests that the combination of these extensive features and forward-thinking development resonates strongly with its target market.
While Templately has built a successful business in a relatively crowded market, building a platform like Templately is not easy.
Templately regularly releases 2-3 new templates every week. Creating winning templates is a hard problem. It involves several teams working in collaboration to make something that has a demand in the market. Marketing, research, and support teams generate template ideas based on market trends and customer demand. Design, content, website, Q&A, and tech teams ensure the release of high-quality templates with ready, customizable designs and content that only require minimal tweaks. A dedicated customer support team ensures users receive the best of the class support. Moreover, merely creating templates is not enough, you have to maintain a global marketing effort to attract meaningful attention.
Each of these tasks requires a certain level of dedication and obsession from a committed team.
This is where understanding Templately's organizational structure comes handy. It provides valuable insights into how the company maintains its rapid growth and innovation in the competitive template marketplace.
Despite its significant market presence, Templately operates with a relatively lean team, demonstrating efficiency and agility in its operations. The team is structured to cover all critical aspects of its operations:
Development Team: At the core of Templately's technical operations is a four-person developer team. This small but efficient team is responsible for the platform's backend infrastructure, feature development, and technical innovations.
Design Team: A dedicated design team of approximately 10 people forms the creative backbone of Templately. This team is crucial for maintaining the platform's vast template library and ensuring that new designs meet market trends and user demands.
Content Team: Working in tandem with the design team, the content team creates the text and placeholder content for templates, which align perfectly with the target niche and require almost no changes. This ensures that users receive not just design shells, but fully fleshed out templates ready for customization.
Support Team: With over 20 people, the support team forms a significant portion of Templately's workforce. This emphasis on customer support underscores the company's commitment to user satisfaction and retention.
Marketing and Research Team: Marketing team plays an important role in product development and also handles market research, user acquisition strategies, and brand communication.
Quality Assurance Team: A dedicated QA team ensures that all templates and features meet Templately's quality standards before release.
In total, Templately operates with a team of 15-20 people across various functions, showcasing a lean and efficient organizational structure.
Templately's operational approach is characterized by several key elements.
The rapid release of new templates (2-3 per week) and features suggests an agile development methodology. This allows Templately to quickly respond to market trends and user feedback.
The company's design process is heavily influenced by user requests and market research. This user-centric approach helps ensure that new templates and features align closely with market demands.
The development of a new template involves multiple teams - from marketing and support to design to content to QA - working in a coordinated manner. This collaborative approach ensures consistency and quality across Templately's offerings.
Regular updates to existing templates and the introduction of new features (like Template Packs) demonstrate a commitment to continuous product improvement.
With users from over 180 countries, Templately likely maintains a global perspective in its operations, considering diverse design preferences and use cases.
However, the entire Startise operational apparatus is underpinned by a strong culture of ownership, user obsession, dedication, and continuous growth. We have previously written about the culture of Templately’s parent company Startise. From The Startise Story:
“The company has a high-ownership organization where people own the organization. The company prides itself on the fact that it has been blessed with team members who own their products. Ms. Afshana offers the example of Startise’s Head of Engineering Mr. Mukul: “The initial infrastructure we had was not suitable to handle the level of customers we were attracting. It was an extremely challenging time to handle the checkout process for our thousands of customers every day and the way our Head of Engineering Mukul managed everything was incredible. There was no time that you couldn't reach Mukul. Any time we sent him a message, he was available and ready to help, no matter the timing. Unless you own your work and company, you wouldn't do it.”
This was just a small example of an extraordinary sense of responsibility and ownership that is common across teams at Startise. Ms. Afshana suggests that the reason they have grown and been able to scale is because of these dedicated team members.”
This sense of strong ownership drives the rest of the organization in its pursuit for excellence and customer delight. That culture in turn makes Templately flywheel work, where each component of the business reinforces the others. A dedicated team churns out high-quality templates at a regular credence. A vast library of templates attracts users across diverse niches. Increased usage leads to more user requests and feedback. User input drives the creation of new templates and features. New offerings attract more users, reinforcing the cycle. This flywheel effect, if maintained, could propel Templately to a dominant position in the WordPress template market.
Despite its impressive growth, Templately faces several challenges in its initial days. The template market is crowded, with numerous competitors offering similar services. While WordPress's popularity is an asset, it also ties Templately's fortunes closely to the platform's future. As users demand more control, Templately must navigate the fine line between ease of use and design flexibility.
As Templately continues to grow, several key factors will likely determine its long-term success.
Any possible implementation of AI-driven features could be a significant differentiator along with the already unique cloud collaboration features available.
While WordPress remains dominant, diversifying to support other platforms could hedge against potential shifts in the CMS market. Similarly, leveraging its collaborative features to build a strong user community could create a moat against competitors. Maintaining template quality and relevance while expanding the library will remain crucial.
Templately's journey from a simple template provider to a collaborative web design platform illustrates the potential for innovation within seemingly mature markets. By focusing on user needs and continuously iterating based on feedback, the company has carved out a significant niche in the WordPress ecosystem.
As the web continues to evolve, the demand for tools that simplify complex processes is likely to grow. Templately's success thus far suggests that there's substantial value in making web design accessible to the masses.
Templately's story is part of a larger narrative about the democratization of web design. As the internet becomes increasingly central to business and personal communication, tools that lower the barrier to entry for web presence become not just convenient, but essential. This democratization has several implications from making professional web design accessible to small businesses and individuals to economic empowerment and digital inclusion.
Templately is weaving a pattern of accessibility and simplicity in the world of web development. As the web design landscape continues to evolve, Templately's ability to maintain and enhance these differentiators will be crucial. The challenge lies in balancing the simplicity that attracts non-technical users with the depth and customization options that more experienced designers demand. The Templately team has so far shown the ability to outperform the market. We will be following closely to see what the company does next.
