Loading organizations...
Makeswift provides a composable visual builder platform that enables teams to design, ship, and scale modern frontends with efficiency. It serves as a shared canvas, offering marketers visual freedom while giving developers precise control over components and infrastructure. The platform supports custom layout controls, global styles, and real-time collaboration, integrating seamlessly with existing tech stacks through type-safe APIs and custom components.
The company was co-founded in 2015 by Alan Pledger, who serves as CEO, Lindsay Trinkle, the COO, and Miguel Oller, the CTO. Their collective insight centered on the need to bridge the operational gap between marketing demands for rapid content deployment and developers' requirements for structured, maintainable code. They envisioned a solution that fosters collaboration and streamlines the web content creation workflow for both disciplines.
Makeswift primarily serves teams where marketers and developers collaborate on building and maintaining custom websites at scale. The platform aims to empower these teams to create rich, modular web experiences without friction, offering tools for version control and scheduled publishing. Its long-term vision is to facilitate a more harmonious and productive environment for developing and managing modern web properties.
Makeswift has raised $13.0M across 4 funding rounds.
Makeswift has raised $13.0M in total across 4 funding rounds.
Makeswift is a no-code visual website builder that empowers marketing and development teams to design, launch, and scale high-performance, custom frontends without rigid templates or developer bottlenecks.[1][2][6] It serves enterprises and growing teams by solving the problem of slow, inflexible content workflows in modern component-based web development (e.g., React, Next.js), offering visual flexibility, real-time collaboration, and seamless integrations with CMSs like Contentful, commerce platforms like BigCommerce, and hosting like Vercel.[1][2] Growth momentum includes a $1.5M equity raise, positive G2 reviews praising its drag-and-drop ease and SEO tools, and expansion into enterprise features like SSO and localization.[5][6][7]
Makeswift emerged from the ashes of Landing Lion, an earlier project by co-founder Alan Pledger, whose technology was completely rewritten into Makeswift for greater power and focus on reusable web components.[7] Headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, the company is led by Co-Founder & CEO (unnamed in sources), Co-Founder & COO, and Co-Founder & CTO, with Pledger as a key voice articulating its vision.[6][4] The idea crystallized around creating a "Canva-like" visual builder scalable to enterprise sites, addressing outdated CMS models by prioritizing visual composition in a component-driven web era; early traction built on this pivot, securing under $5M in total funding across two rounds.[4][6][7]
Makeswift rides the composable web trend, bridging headless CMS limitations with a visual layer for component-based stacks (React, Vue, Next.js), enabling "Git for marketers" without breaking brand control.[4] Timing aligns with AI-driven design and edge computing booms, where enterprises demand speed amid talent shortages—market forces like Vercel's rise and no-code adoption favor its no-bloat performance and integrations.[1][2] It influences the ecosystem by reorienting workflows around reusability, positioning as a "modern WordPress" from landing pages to global headless stacks, accelerating composable commerce and marketing agility.[4][6]
Makeswift is poised to dominate visual CMS with its AI layout generation and enterprise push, potentially capturing more of the $10B+ headless market as teams prioritize speed over code-heavy builds.[4] Trends like multimodal AI and edge personalization will amplify its strengths, evolving it from builder to full lifecycle platform; influence may grow via deeper Vercel ties and global expansions, solidifying Atlanta's no-code footprint. This positions Makeswift as the flexible alternative in a rigid web tools landscape, delivering custom power at startup speed.[1][4]
Makeswift has raised $13.0M in total across 4 funding rounds.
Makeswift's investors include Guillermo Rauch, Active Capital, C2 Investment, Comal Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, David Mytton.
Makeswift has raised $13.0M across 4 funding rounds. Most recently, it raised $3.0M Venture Round in March 2023.
| Date | Round | Lead Investors | Other Investors | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 21, 2023 | $3M Venture Round | — | Guillermo Rauch | Announced |
| Mar 1, 2023 | $3M Series U | — | Active Capital, C2 Investment, Comal Ventures, Balaji Srinivasan, David Mytton | Announced |
| Dec 1, 2019 | $2M Series U | — | Active Capital, Comal Ventures | Announced |
| Mar 1, 2018 | $5M Seed | — | Active Capital, Comal Ventures | Announced |
