Makers of TinyMCE Acquire Setka

Tiny, the makers of TinyMCE, have acquired Setka, a content design and editing platform, for an undisclosed amount. Founders Katya Bazilevskaya, Alexey Ametov, Vasily Esmanov, Roman Khudonogov, and the rest of the Setka team will join Tiny as part of the agreement.

Tiny has been tracking an increasing developer demand for rich text editing components, citing 8.1 million TinyMCE downloads (up 77%) and 106 million downloads of rich text editing components in general from NPM in the last 12 months (up 53% YoY).

“TinyMCE has typically focused on the average business user or knowledge worker; someone familiar with Microsoft Word or Google Docs,” Tiny founder and CEO Andrew Roberts said. 

“With Setka, we can now serve professional content creators and designers who want more advanced options.”

TinyMCE is used by millions of WordPress users, most visibly in the Classic Editor plugin as well as the Advanced Editor Tools plugin, previously known as TinyMCE Advanced. Advanced Editor Tools adds a “Classic Paragraph” block to the block editor that gives access to the TinyMCE editor with configurable rows and buttons. It provides a stepping stone for those who are not quite ready to switch to the block editor.

While Tiny is a widely recognized leader in rich text editing, Setka allows for more interactive content creation with design capabilities for arranging text, images, and other visual elements. It allows users to create and save post templates and easily reuse design elements throughout the WYSIWYG design process. Tiny plans to merge TinyMCE and Setka for a combined platform that will offer more than either product alone.

“Modern day content creators are much more ambitious, and Setka allows us to meet more demanding use cases,” Roberts said. 

“Over time, we envisage a combined editor platform that is both easy to use and powerful.”

Setka currently offers integrations for several CMS’s, document management tools, and CRMs, including WordPress, Drupal, Magento, Ghost, Microsoft Sharepoint, and Hubspot. The Setka WordPress plugin integrates with the block editor and provides its own content block that can work together with other blocks on the page.

Former CEO Kate Bazilevskaya, who will be assuming the role of director of business development and partnerships at Tiny, said the team intends to focus on the CMS space.

“Through an array of integrations, we hope to make this visual building technology more accessible to businesses who already have a CMS in place, yet want more power in their editing tools,” Bazilevskaya said.