Take a stroll down memory lane with our biggest corporate updates of 2021

The year 2021 will go down in commercetools history as one marked by skyrocketing growth in every area – events, partnerships, funding, awards and a new portfolio strategy – reinforcing our company mission of providing the best commerce product to transform the way enterprise software is distributed, customized and used. And we’re not slowing down. So, as we’re entering a new year, we thought now would be the perfect opportunity to celebrate what we’ve accomplished in 2021 to illustrate how far we’ve come as a company.

We started the year off strong by kickstarting the creation of our new partner program: the Partner Possibility Program – named after all the possibilities that arise from working with us. As we’ve always been a partner-first company, we created a new three-tier plan consisting of Registered, Select and Premier levels for ISVs (independent software vendors) and SIs (system integrators). We offer these partners an expanding set of resources for supporting them in discovering, developing and implementing commercetools projects. Through access to training, support and an active community of commerce experts, commercetools partners can deepen their expertise and become leaders in the next generation of commerce. 

What makes our partner program unique is the fact that we don’t rank our partners by their size or revenue, but rather their ability. Currently, we have signed around 140 partners – from large enterprises to startups – and are looking forward to further growing our numbers.

In March, we announced the exhilarating news that we’ve expanded our partnership with Google, impacting every part of the commercetools business. Businesses can now purchase commercetools directly from the Google Cloud Marketplace, which will benefit retailers with deeper product integration, unified billing and an expanded go-to-market relationship which includes running and scaling commercetools on Google Cloud. With this deepened relationship with Google Cloud, we will further empower our customers to design innovative and exceptional digital commerce experiences across all touchpoints with the Google Cloud Console and Marketplace. 

The summer started off with a bang with us hosting the most successful Modern Commerce Day ever. And there was one common theme throughout the day: regardless of industry, size or business model, MACH defines what modern commerce is today and positions brands to be primed and ready for the future. The main agenda of the event focused on how commerce, digital commerce and eCommerce visionaries helped their organizations drive the Modern Commerce mindset within their organization. Speakers shared everything from their transition story to how MACH boosted their customer base.

Over 1,400 attendees tuned in for our 34 virtual sessions that included industry leaders from some of the biggest world-leading organizations across nearly a dozen industries. Presenters from Danone and Google, as well as from our partners Contentstack, Valtech, Avensia, EPAM and Myplanet all spoke highly of transitioning to MACH architecture and the many advantages of our headless platform. 

In September, we secured a spot on the 2021 List of Unicorn Companies thanks to a whopping valuation of $1.9 billion USD – the highest ever for a privately held commerce software provider!  Led by Accel, a global venture capital firm with a portfolio of companies that include Fiverr, Slack and Spotify, as well as our existing investors Insight Partners and REWE Group, we secured $140 million USD in series C funding (which led us to being listed on the Nasdaq Tower in NYC!). 

The capital raised will fuel our global expansion by expanding our sales and marketing efforts in North America, Europe, and APAC, which will ultimately help more businesses eliminate legacy commerce platforms and embrace the modern way of building a commerce environment. The funding will also be used to extend the commercetools product portfolio and expand its partner ecosystem. This includes investing in third-party channel relationships that will make technology integrations and extensions with commercetools even easier.

To reflect our many tremendous achievements, we decided we needed an updated website to match! In October, we launched the new commercetools.com with a refreshed, modern look. There are new sections, revamped modern designs and engaging content all over that explore our offering and share our successes. 

What’s most significant about our new website, however, is the attention that we place on our customers – we’ve added several brand new customer success stories that highlight the possibilities that modern commerce brings to businesses, underscored by KPIs that show the real growth and opportunities that platform migration brings.   

For the end of the year, we’re at the beginning of something new. Making a bold move in a new direction, we made our first-ever acquisition by purchasing Frontastic, a leading frontend-as-a-service company that enables brands and retailers to create outstanding shopping experiences across multiple channels.

Frontastic’s headless, composable solution will enhance our product portfolio of best-of-breed components that suit upper mid-market to large enterprises, and will be offered independently to existing and new customers. With the addition of Frontastic to the company's product line, we are building a broader portfolio of commerce technology services to support global enterprises and reinvent eCommerce, while also providing a fully MACH-based platform.

Discover more of our biggest achievements, as well as our plans for 2022, in our Best of commercetools 2021 booklet.