Interview With Demetrio Fortman from MotoCMS

Today users have an abundance of solutions for creating a website.

The demand for CMS platforms is so huge, and so is the supply. This makes it possible for a customer to choose from dozens of systems.

One of the newest and most interesting CMS options is MotoCMS. We talked with Demetrio Fortman, the CEO and founder of MotoCMS, who shared his story.

Welcome, Demetrio. Tell our readers a few words about yourself.

My pleasure, thank you! My name is Demetrio Fortman. I’ve been on the web development market for more than a decade now and I am feeling lucky, doing what I love. Looking back, I can say that my path took a long time from the college student to the founder of a website builder company and the COO of one of the top website marketplaces.

What was your first business?

Everything started with the Flash technology. To be short, me and my friend decided to create a WYSIWYG editor – a truly fast and intuitive creator for websites powered by Flash. Everyone was psyched with it, so we’ve seen a perspective for something big. When we started, there were only the two of us. We wrote the entire code. Then we released FlashMoto – the first version and name of our CMS. We attained our target audience.

Everything was okay till in one day Steve Jobs changed the whole game and, willingly or not, destroyed Flash as the solution, trend and technology. We had to come up with a different solution and adjust to the market. The team rebuilt FlashMoto and that’s how we got MotoCMS – the second generation of our website builder developed with HTML. It is still available today together with MotoCMS 3.

And how is it going today?

We are one of the top vendors of website templates with 60+ unique business categories to get a website for almost any purpose. Today MotoCMS is also a responsive website builder that, besides of web themes, we provide our customers with.

MotoCMS is not the only project you initiated. Is that right?

Correct. When my team and I felt that we succeeded with the MotoCMS website creator, it became a tremendous stimulus for creating something that would catch up and surpass these results. [This is how we come out with] my next projects – Defrozo and MotoPress. Each of the two has its own history, but the fact remains that MotoCMS is having the largest impact at the moment.

What do you think triggered your success?

The web was different those days. The website builder market was young and barely optimized for the users with no web development background. It was this concept that I took as a motto when began thinking about creating a user-friendly platform.

On the other hand, it would be a big mistake to forget about my brother-in-arm – a developer. MotoCMS was originally built for those who can’t code, but we realized that professionals couldn’t go anywhere. So I thought why not to benefit from this? An easy-to-use product must be for everyone, right? So we decided it would be better to cooperate and today web developers comprise the second target audience of our company along with non-professional web publishers.

We cooperate with thousands of professional web studios and independent developers, who use MotoCMS to make websites for their clients in dozens of countries all over the world. The case in point is that our admin panel is now translated into 8 languages, and 3 localizations are on their way. It is interesting to note that it was achieved thanks to our customers. Some of them wanted to work with the admin panel on their native language. We were surprised and pleased at the same time. We realized that the team and our customers are something like a single whole, the community, you know.

Developers are very picky. How do you deal with that?

MotoCMS offers very attractive terms for doing business. Believe it or not, but a developer doesn’t even require a start-up budget to get a net profit with our website builder. It may be hard to believe, but let me explain how it works.

Every our customer always has an opportunity to get a first-hand knowledge about our platform thanks to a free trial period. You register a demo, go through the process of customization and make a final decision: to buy it or not. The thing is the test version is created not only for a user who wants to get acquainted with our product, but for the one with serious intentions to create a website. When the trial period ends and the results meet your requirements, we can save all your demo [site] progress and provide you with the ready-made website that you purchase with all your content.

The punchline is that web developers and website publishers with no coding skills can use a trial version on the same level. Any web developer can buyout own MotoCMS website, once get paid for a client’s project. For those, having a large client base and working with us for a long time, MotoCMS offers bulk discounts and other benefits of the loyalty program to save time and reduce expenditures during the developing process.

And of course, we are always very keen to hear from our customers. It’s been almost two years since the release of MotoCMS 3 – the third generation of our admin panel. It was built according to the latest web technologies and our customers’ requests. The team keeps improving our website builder all the time. The feedback we get is very helpful to our team and we are constantly producing new templates and updating the system.

While we’re on the subject of customers, how can you help a client to cross the line between a rookie, who’s eager to create a website, and a fulfilled owner of an online business?

One of the influencers once said that the business is a marathon. As a marathoner and a business manager myself, I went through this and can confirm that these words are 100% true. That’s why we consider each client from the long-term perspective. Our company is fully customer-oriented. The feedback that we receive from real clients speaks for itself.

Another reason is one particular characteristic of our business. We can’t afford to offer our product without customer support because we know that some of the clients could possibly require assistance when they face issues, however small. Don’t forget that we collaborate with real businesses and our company policy includes support services for our big clients and their clients as well. Customer care is especially vital when talking about such a vast score or work.

Any user, regardless of whether he or she is an owner of a launched website or registered a demo version, can get a professional assistance in two ways: through the live chat and a callback. To deal with technical issues, we also have a ticketing system.

On top of that, the admin panel is stuffed with quick tips. There is also a help center, where every client can read FAQs, tutorial etc. So, if you are a MotoCMS customer who needs help, you will never be alone.

What is more challenging – running a marathon or doing business?

Both is not simple, but both have a great impact on my life. In fact, running is a universal answer for everything. When I have to think, rest or just refresh my mind, I go for a run. That’s how I got a few ideas that I used for my projects. For me, a marathon is a real challenge that helped me to try myself in a totally new environment and understand what I am capable of.

Doing business is a big job as well. I can’t remember how many nights I’ve spent in front of my computer to reach this moment. But it’s totally worth it and I’m not going to stop on the achievements me and my team reached so far.

Business can be compared to a marathon. It requires titanic efforts and arrangements for crossing the finishing line. However, business is the race that never ends and that is why you love doing it.

Demetrio, thank you for this interview. It was a pleasure. Good luck to you and your CMS project.

Thanks for having me and for your kind words. It was great to meet you!