What we've been working on

We haven't shared many product updates over the past year, but that's not because we've been quarantining on the couch (I promise 😇)! Instead, we took a step back and worked on some big changes to our internal systems. First we'll explain what they are and then why we've prioritized them.

New Engine: Our "engine" is what renders your websites based on the design and content you created in the editor. We have learned a lot since we started and now we've used that knowledge to build a new system. In 2020 we rewrote the engine to become a standardized set of components which we can be more easily extended. This new version has been live since the end of last year and you probably haven't noticed. Sounds boring? Not at all, just read to the end!

New Editor: Our new editor has been a work in progress since May 2020 and will enter open beta very soon. As with the new engine, our goal was to standardize everything to make new functionality easier to add. We've also used the opportunity to improve the design and performance.

New Hosting: We have moved around between CDNs to host your websites but none of them really suited our situation. That's why we built our own CDN which has been in production since February 2020 and provides some of the fastest hosting in the industry.

Why we did this now
We did none of those big changes for fun. We would've much rather worked on beautiful new things you can see right away, but there's a good reason. When I started Umso nearly three years ago, it was a minimum viable product. That means it was just meant to help me figure out whether or not it could become a valuable business.

Many websites, paying customers (thank you so much 🙌🏻), and two full-time employees later we have decided that YES! it is valuable business, hooray! Now we had to figure out how to turn the successful MVP into the amazing product we actually want to build.

We have a great vision for what Umso can be. However, those things add a lot of complexity which our existing Engine, Editor and Hosting couldn't handle. That's why we worked so much on improving them.