2024 was a year of uncertainties - persistent inflation, tech layoffs, two devastating wars, one bitterly fought election, euphoric public markets, stagnant private markets, and tight corporate budgets. The year, however, may still be characterized as the year when content creation proliferated. In the age of AI, our mission to “build trust through content” and our vision to "help global enterprises simplify the creation, management, and delivery of content" seem more critical than ever. And I’m proud of my team at dotCMS, who, despite the surrounding uncertainty, showed purpose and resilience in making great strides towards our mission.
In 2024, we shipped 142 releases, a whopping 230% year-over-year increase and a testament to our focus on providing a full-featured, Universal Content Management System to our customers. We’re empowering content teams to create, unify, and scale content, build digital experiences visually, and reach a global audience across multiple channels, locations, and languages while ensuring brand consistency. And developers have always loved building on dotCMS because of its flexibility, advanced tooling for modern framework ecosystems, and integrations. We have also renewed our focus on improving the DevOps experience by providing rapid deployment to any cloud infrastructure, simpler upgrade paths, and top-tier security.
Innovating Universal Content Management System
In 2024, we released the Universal Visual Editor (UVE) in our long-term supported version dotCMS 24.04.24 LTS. The UVE, which enables seamless, in-context editing for both traditional and headless environments, is the foundational feature of our vision of Universal CMS. It combines Edit Mode and Edit Mode Anywhere, offering a unified interface with features like drag-and-drop content palettes, device previews, and rule-based layout design. Content teams now enjoy greater flexibility, whether managing local instances or remote front-ends, enhancing efficiency across workflows.
In August, we hosted our inaugural Universal CMS Summit in Montréal, bringing together industry leaders, customers, and partners for a dynamic exploration of content management’s future. The event featured inspiring keynotes, expert-led panels, and interactive sessions that dove deep into multi-tenant capabilities, AI-driven workflows, and innovations shaping the CMS landscape. It was a true celebration of collaboration, learning, and the vibrant community driving all of us forward.
We also integrated advanced AI capabilities through dotAI, empowering content creators to generate text and images directly within the platform. This feature enhances productivity by leveraging AI for content generation, semantic search, SEO optimization, and auto-tagging. dotAI also enables auto-categorization of content and metadata, simplifying content management workflows. Its integration with the Block Editor ensures a seamless experience for generating and enhancing content, while AI-powered tools like summarization and keyword recommendations help teams work smarter and faster.
To support our technical users, we introduced the dotCMS Command Line Interface (dotCLI), a powerful tool for managing instances, synchronizing files, and automating workflows through the command line. dotCLI simplifies repetitive tasks like deployments and ensures seamless configuration across environments. Additionally, the release of our JavaScript SDK empowers front-end developers to interact securely with dotCMS instances, enabling streamlined development of components, API interactions, and dynamic integrations for headless applications. These tools significantly reduce manual effort and improve developer efficiency.
Significant progress was made in rolling out dotEvergreen - a reimagination of the way we build, test, deploy and operate dotCMS Cloud. In 2024 we delivered new capabilities to customers who passed a thorough quality and reliability test. Our goal with this approach is to completely eliminate the need for cumbersome annual upgrades, simplify infrastructure, and ensure seamless access to the latest features without compromising stability. Currently, over 13% of our dotCMS Cloud customers are already benefiting from dotEvergreen, and by 2025, our goal is to make it the most widely adopted version among our customers.
At dotCMS, security remains a top priority, and 2024 has been a year of continued excellence on this front. We successfully maintained our ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to rigorous global standards for information security. Additionally, we achieved TX-RAMP Level 2 certification, strengthening our ability to provide secure solutions for state agencies and organizations. We also renewed our SOC 2 Type II compliance, ensuring robust safeguards to protect customer data and maintain transparency in our security processes.
A Year of Growth and Community-building
As we continue to grow as a company, our identity also continues to mature. To showcase our brand identity, we launched a sleek new website entirely on dotCMS. It’s a bold reflection of who we are: innovative, fast-moving, and a little whimsical. Our clean design - balancing white space with vibrant colors - speaks to our future-focused vision and playful spirit, where simplicity meets creativity. Just like our platform, we believe in flexibility, efficiency, and having fun while delivering exceptional results.
Our community has grown significantly, with the onboarding of a diverse range of new clients across industries, further expanding our global user base. One standout partnership this year was with World Travel Holdings, who are migrating over 5,000 websites to a single dotCMS instance. This ambitious project has pushed our product and customer experience teams to deliver a cutting-edge solution, underscoring dotCMS’ unmatched multisite capabilities.
At dotCMS, one of our core values is customer obsession, and true to that, our commitment to customer success has been unwavering. Our Customer Experience team delivered another year of industry-leading gross and net retention numbers, a 4.8/5 Customer Satisfaction score (CSAT), and an impressive 98.6% adherence to support SLAs. I’m incredibly proud of our team for consistently raising the bar and creating remarkable outcomes for our customers.
In November, we hosted our very first virtual dotConnect24. The two-day event brought together marketing, technology, content, web, and developer professionals. It provided incredible insights on topics such as the future of AI, modern content strategies, and innovations shaping digital experience. We’re thrilled with the success of dotConnect24 and are already looking forward to making dotConnect25 even bigger and better next year!
We wanted to discuss how brands build trust in an era of AI, misinformation, and constant distraction - so we launched Real Talk, Real Trust. The brand-new podcast shares real stories, challenges, and actionable strategies for fostering authentic customer relationships powered by technology and innovation. We are thankful to the leaders such as Tom Wentworth, CMO at Recorded Future, Eric Williamson, CMO at CallMiner, and Kevin Cochran, CMO at Vultr, who have joined us so far, and we look forward to having other leaders join us in 2025.
But more than anything else, we are thrilled by the addition of world-class innovators and leaders to our growing team. Preston So joined as Vice President of Product, bringing decades of experience to scale our product strategy, design, and developer relations. Inna Bosenko stepped in as Vice President of Marketing to lead growth and brand development, while Ryan Picchini took on the role of Vice President of Channels and GTM Strategy, strengthening partnerships and go-to-market success. Rounding out the team, Maria Fernandez Trevino joined as Head of User Experience, and Marc Boutillette as Director of Outbound Product Management to elevate user design and field enablement efforts.
Looking Ahead
As a year marked with uncertainty draws to a close, I am feeling quite optimistic about the tide turning in 2025. We may have avoided a global conflict, and the FED may have achieved a soft landing after all. The election seems to have gone the way of the side screaming efficiency and innovation. And as our customers are preparing to embark on their own journeys of AI adoption, there is no doubt in my mind that 2025 will be a year of innovation like no other.
And at dotCMS, we feel like we’re ready for the occasion. Our roadmap includes key innovations such as: universal editability, enabling seamless content editing across any channel or destination; universal developability, empowering developers to work with any framework, stack, or technology; AI-driven innovation, including generative AI features like content creation, code generation, and AI-powered copilots; and platform enhancements, simplifying infrastructure management and upgrade paths and improving DevOps experience. These advancements will deliver cutting-edge solutions that drive efficiency, flexibility, and value for both content teams and developers.
As I write this, the sun is setting on 2024 in Miami Beach, and I’m feeling deeply blessed to be surrounded by a dedicated, passionate, and innovative community. The collaboration and support among the dotCMS team, our customers, and our partners is truly unique and it gives me great confidence that this community will continue to thrive for many years to come. Here’s to another year of helping each other build trust through content!
Zain Ishaq
CEO, dotCMS