CMS Developer Strapi Looks To Boost Partner Visibility With New Channel Program - Exclusive

With the new Strapi Partner Program – the company’s first structured channel initiative – the company is looking to recruit more solution providers and resellers and educate the CMS market about how partners are working with the Strapi open-source software.

Strapi, developer of the open-source content management system of the same name, is launching a new channel program with the goals of providing its solution provider and reseller partners with a more comprehensive program framework and recruiting new channel partners.

The new Strapi Partner Program is also intended to elevate the visibility of the Strapi channel, making customers aware of the channel partners the company works with and the potential benefits of engaging with Strapi through the channel.

“Right now the partner program is a bit of an iceberg,” said Mark Raymond, Strapi’s strategic partnerships manager, in an exclusive interview with CRN. “The visible aspect is basically the partners that we are aware of or who are implementing Strapi. And everything underneath are all the myriad agencies who have been using Strapi now for years, but just haven’t put their hand up and said, ‘Hey, we’re using Strapifor our end clients,’ because we don’t always have visibility into who’s using Strapi.”

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Strapi, headquartered in San Francisco, develops its namesake open-source content management system (CMS) for a $20.95 billion market that’s expected to grow at a 5.44 percent CAGR to $27.30 billion by 2028 and includes such industry heavyweights as Adobe, OpenText and WordPress.

Unlike some CMS systems where the back-end production and front-end presentation systems are tightly linked, Strapi’s “headless” CMS – written in the popular JavaScript language – is used to create content on a back-end system that can be used across multiple front-end presentation layers. The Strapi CMS provides a single back-end repository for content that can be published across any front-end display or devices such as websites, mobile applications and digital displays.

“Marketers and content managers are logging into three, four or five different applications to essentially publish the exact same content across these different platforms,” Raymond said of traditional CMS systems. “Enterprises are saying [they’ve] got to be more efficient with their content flow.”

Strapi offers a free community edition of its software under a standard MIT open-source license, as well as selling commercial editions of the product including a self-managed enterprise edition and a fully managed cloud edition.

Raymond, who joined Strapi in August as the company’s first dedicated channel management executive, said that until recently the company has been working with about 20 active partners under informal arrangements. Most are digital agency solution providers who work with clients to implement, customize and use the Strapi system. But Raymond says that given Strapi’s open-source roots, there is a fairly large community of solution providers and clients using the software that the company isn’t aware of.

The company also works with resellers SoftwareOne and SHI International who make Strapi available for a wider audience, especially small and mid-size businesses, and a few systems integrators. The company also works with a number of technology and ISV partners who develop add-on software for the Strapi platform.

Altogether Raymond estimates that between 30 and 40 percent of Strapi’s business – about one in every three opportunities – is currently generated through the channel.

With the new Strapi Partner Program that Raymond has assembled over the last four months Strapi is offering a more structured channel experience for partners to engage with the company.

The new program, which Raymond said is now operational, also will be a vehicle for recruiting, onboarding and enabling new partners. Already the company has more than 30 partners – a number Raymond hopes to nearly double by the end of 2024 to increase Strapi’s geographical distribution and its reach into more vertical industries.

Current partners that have joined the program include Dinkbit, DFX5, Notum, Smile and Successive Digital. “Being part of Strapi’s Partner Program is a strategic move for Successive Digital” said Bikram Singh, chief technology officer at Successive Digital, in a statement. “It allows us to leverage Strapi’s flexibility and scalability, providing our clients with tailor-made solutions that drive growth and efficiency.”

Another goal for the new program is to make Strapi and its channel partners “more visible” to current and potential customers. “We’re going to use this as an opportunity to educate the Strapi community…that we have solution providers who can help them out with their applications,” Raymond said, noting that a partner directory is part of the new program.

A key part of the new program is sales and technical enablement training for partners, ensuring they fully understand the Strapi technology and the best ways to sell and support it.

“We’re providing access to best practices as it relates to Strapi, so I’m running monthly sales and technical enablement sessions with partners to make sure they understand what Strapi can do and how they can best implement it for their end-customers. Because ultimately, this is going to be an end-benefit for the end-customer,” Raymond said.

The Strapi Partner Program has three tiers. An entry-level Community tier will serve partners who essentially work independently of the company, many typically working with the free Community Edition of the company’s software. The Business and Enterprise tiers are for partners who work more closely with Strapi and its commercial products, often serving mid-size and large customers, and are developing go-to-market strategies around Strapi software.

Inclusion in the Business and Enterprise tiers is determined by sales volume while partners in the top tier must also meet technical enablement requirements and develop marketing content. Enterprise-tier partners earn larger discounts and other benefits such as premium support. Strapi also provides some financial assistance and market development resources for specific sales opportunities and industry events, according to Raymond.

“The launch of the Strapi Partner Program marks a significant stride towards collaborative innovation,” said Strapi CEO Pierre Burgy, in a statement. “This program is not just about bringing together the best in the field to make sure our customers get top-notch services, it’s also an opportunity to shape the future of composable application development.”