Profile

Acquia is a software-as-a-service company co-founded by Dries Buytaert and Jay Batson to provide enterprise products, services, and technical support for the open-source web content management platform Drupal. It is an open-source digital experience company that empowers the world’s most ambitious brands to embrace innovation and create customer moments that matter. 

The company empowers the world’s most ambitious brands to create digital customer experiences that matter. With open-source Drupal at its core, the Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) enables marketers, developers, and IT operations teams at thousands of global organizations to rapidly compose and deploy digital products and services that engage customers, enhance conversions, and help businesses stand out.

In September 2019, Vista Equity Partners acquired the majority stake in Acquia for $1 billion. The company has also made more than eight acquisitions to expand its product portfolio and customer base. Acquia most recently made a purchase when it finalized a deal to buy digital asset management company Widen in order to advance its DXP experience platform. Although the specifics of the transaction were not made public, Dries Buytaert, a co-founder of Acquia, said it was the highest price Acquia had ever paid to acquire a rival business.

They have over 1,000 employees across locations and serve more than 4,000 customers, including Warner Music Group, NBC Sports, Pfizer, and the Australian Government. The company has been recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the US by Inc. Magazine and Deloitte. 

The company’s mission is to provide the world’s most ambitious brands with technology that allows them to embrace innovation and create customer moments that matter. The company offers a range of products and services that enable organizations to build, operate, and optimize websites, apps, and other digital experiences.

Key Products

Cloud Platform

A fully managed and hosted Drupal application platform that is architected for maximum Drupal performance. It allows you to meet growth, traffic, and performance demands with high- availability hosting in seven global regions and a 99.99% SLA1. It also minimizes security incidents and practices proactive vulnerability blocking with the Drupal Steward Program.

Site Factory

A tool that allows you to create, manage, and update all your websites from one spot. Site Factory gives your team the power to create and control sites for multiple languages, campaigns, regions, and brands. You can assign role-based access restrictions, build site templates for future use, and deploy new sites quickly without saying a peep to your dev team.

DAM

DAM is a digital asset management system that helps manage complex content across teams, tools, and channels. It cuts days off of creative production and distribution and helps ensure consistent brand identity by empowering all teams with brand guidelines and approved assets.

CDP

CDP is a customer data platform that unifies customer data from everywhere into a single, persistent customer ID. It equips teams organization-wide with machine learning insights, powering 1:1 segmentation at scale. It also helps minimize privacy risks by providing a single source of truth for customer data.

Campaign Studio

A homebase to power all your multichannel marketing campaigns. Campaign Studio has everything you need to improve efficiency without complicating campaign management. Then, as your business scales, Campaign Factory allows the fast and seamless deployment, management, and tracking of multiple Campaign Studio instances.

Customers Insights

Acquia’s DAM solution, Widen, received an impressive rating of 4.5 out of 5 stars from users. Similarly, Acquia’s Drupal Cloud achieved a remarkable rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars. These high ratings are a testament to the quality and effectiveness of Acquia’s products.

The Acquia platform is designed to offer a comprehensive range of features and capabilities to enhance customer experiences. It incorporates customer feedback to deliver best-in-class analytics, segmentation, orchestration, and identity resolution.

In addition to G2, Acquia Cloud Platform has also received positive recognition on Capterra, where it achieved a rating of 4.3. Customers on Capterra have praised Acquia for its user-friendly interface and excellent customer service.

Customer testimonials highlight Acquia’s strengths, including great hosting, high reliability, and responsive customer service. These qualities are highly valued by customers and contribute to their overall satisfaction with Acquia’s offerings.

Customer Quotes

“Great product for using Drupal at scale” -Global Director, Marketing & Communications, FFW

“The gold standard for hosting and optimizing your Drupal DXP” – Senior Director, Marketing Strategy, RISD Media Group

“Reliable and easy Drupal cloud hosting with outstanding support” – Administrator in Telecommunications

Statistics

• Founded: 2007


• Number of employees: 1,400+ 


• Number of offices: 5 (Massachusetts, Australia, UK, France and Japan)


• Number of Users: 4,000+ organizations 


• Number of partners: 720+

Rating and Commentary

Acquia, led by Stephen Reny as President and Chief Executive Officer, is positioned for substantial growth in the digital experience management solutions market. With Stephen’s extensive executive leadership experience and the expertise of the rest of the leadership team, including Co-founder Dries Buytaert, Acquia is driving its success as a premier provider of enterprise products, services, and technical support for the open-source web content management platform Drupal.

Supported by strong financial backing from investors like Vista Equity Partners, the company aims to strengthen its position in the market. These investments not only demonstrate confidence in the company’s vision and technology but also drive exciting developments in the ever-evolving digital landscape. Furthermore, strategic partnerships enable them to deliver innovative solutions and advance the security and infrastructure of the digital experience industry. Despite competition from established brands like Sitecore, Jahia, Optimizely, Adobe, and Salesforce, they remain committed to developing robust strategies to thrive in the market. By continuously improving its offerings, the company aims to solidify its presence and capture a larger market share.

Acquia has built a strong reputation for providing high-quality products and services that assist businesses in gaining insights to power their marketing strategies and enhance the customer experience.

Acquia's Video

Key Executives

Stephen Reny, President and Chief Executive Officer

Stephen is a highly skilled and accomplished executive with nearly three decades of leadership experience. He has extensive experience in leadership roles in various sectors, including the technology sector, the financial sector, corporate banking, investment banking, and private equity. Before becoming the CEO, he served as Acquia’s Chief Operating Officer, in charge of business operations, including customer success, professional services, global support, and security. Reny also held executive positions at other companies like HP and Micro Focus, where he oversaw their Information Management and Governance and global SaaS operations until joining Acquia in 2018.

Dries Buytaert, Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer

Dries Buytaert developed, originated, and initially led the Drupal project, an effective open-source platform for creating websites and digital experiences. Buytaert also helped build Mollom, a service that analyzes a website’s content to determine its quality and blocks spam from being published. Aside from developing and handling an executive position at Acquia, Buytaert writes an open-source blog called dri.es, where he talks about Drupal and the future of the web.

Chris Andersen, Chief Financial Officer

Chris oversees the worldwide accounting, legal, technology, facilities, and data security operations of the company. Chris contributes his over twenty years of experience in financial management for large software organizations. Chris began his professional career  at the public accounting firm of Arthur Andersen. His previous employers include Akamai Technologies, Progress Software, and Novell. He is a certified public accountant with a B.S. and an M.S. in business administration from BYU’s Marriott School of Management.

Chris Doggett, Chief Revenue Officer

He oversees the company’s revenue generation and global sales activities, which include field sales, inside sales, channel sales, business development, solutions engineering, account management, and sales operations. Doggett has been in sales leadership for nearly two decades. He has taken on important roles that have initiated programs and missions for growing  revenue while increasing the productivity and profits of the companies he has worked with. He has worked with companies of all sizes, from startups to mid-sized businesses, and led teams of high performers for over 15 years.

Organizational Insights

Acquia’s culture is everything to them. They believe that a stellar people experience fuels an incredible customer experience. Everyday, they extend boundaries to achieve the extraordinary, both for themselves and for their customers. Acquia’s culture of collaboration and community stems from the vision of their co-founder, CTO, and CSO. 

According to Glassdoor reviews, 65% of its employees would recommend working there to a friend. Employees also rated it 3.8 out of 5 for work-life balance, 3.8 for culture and values, and 3.7 for career opportunities. Some pros mentioned by employees include “People are great and the Drupal Community is awesome” and “Great culture to be part of!”.

The company offers a highly collaborative environment that inspires employees to make their biggest impact. They try to live by their “core DNA,” which injects creativity, commitment, integrity, and enjoyment into everything they do. They are committed to offering every opportunity to learn, stretch, and grow. Their culture of continuous, lifelong learning allows them to thrive and create a lasting impact, both personally and professionally. Recognition and feedback are important for motivating success. 

It provides high-quality, employee-first benefits and fantastic office amenities crafted to enrich an innovative and productive team. In the U.S., they offer a highly competitive suite of benefits, including low-cost medical, dental, and vision insurance, pre-tax health care and dependent care flexible spending accounts, pre-tax commuter and parking accounts, life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, short-term disability, long-term disability, and a 401(k) retirement savings plan. 

Highlights include low employee premiums for medical, dental, and vision insurance; employer Health Savings Account contributions; cutting-edge telemedicine visits; fitness center reimbursement; adult and dependent orthodontia benefits; a confidential employee assistance program; identity theft protection; travel assistance; will preparation; and more.

Board Members

Dries Buytaert

Dries Buytaert is the original creator and project lead for Drupal, a powerful open-source platform for building websites and digital experiences. Dries is also Co-founder, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Strategy Officer of Acquia, the open-source digital experience company.

Paul Sallaberry

Paul Sallaberry is a software industry professional with over three decades of experience in the technology industry. He began his career at Software Design Incorporated (SDI) in the early 1980s. He has held executive positions at several technology companies, including Veritas Software, where he served as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Field Operations. Sallaberry also contributes to the boards of directors of several information technology companies, including Acquia, Moovweb, and Calypso Technology.

Brian Paul

Brian Paul has been a software engineer for over 10 years. Brian started their career at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, where they worked on the OpenStack platform. Brian then moved to Acquia, where he is currently the Director. Brian has also worked on the implementation of a customized theme and branding for the Horizon web interface within the HPE Helion OpenStack distribution. Brian is an expert in Ansible, Vagrant, Ruby, Shell scripting, and Django.

Investors

Vista Equity Partners

Vista is a U.S.-based investment company with locations in Austin, Chicago, New York City, Oakland, and San Francisco as well as more than $50 billion in total capital commitments. Vista only invests in businesses that use enterprise software, data, and technology and are run by top-notch management teams. Vista contributes professional expertise and multi-level support to help businesses reach their full potential as a value-added investor with a long-term outlook. A sizable long-term capital base, expertise in structuring technology-focused transactions, and tried-and-true management techniques that produce flexibility and opportunity serve as the foundation of Vista’s investment strategy.

Tenaya Capital

Tenaya Capital is a leading venture capital fund focused on early-stage technology. Tenaya is an active enterprise and consumer technology investor with $1.5 billion in assets under management. Tenaya seeks to partner with companies early in their journeys, typically at the Series B and Series C stage. Tenaya has collaborated with leading technology startups from its offices in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Greater Boston Area. 

Centerview Capital

Centerview Capital is a private equity firm that invests primarily in companies in the technology and consumer sectors. In September 2015, Centerview Capital led a Series G round of funding for Acquia, raising $55 million. This funding helped company scale its global operations, sales, and marketing, as well as the development of its solutions for building, delivering, and optimizing digital experiences.

New Enterprise Associates

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a global venture capital firm that invests in technology and healthcare. In May 2014, NEA led a $50 million financing round for Acquia, bringing the total investment in the company to $118.6 million. Ravi Viswanathan, general partner at NEA, joined the company’s Board of Directors as part of the investment.

Key Milestones

• In 2023, Acquia announced new Acquia Customer Data Platform (Acquia CDP) tiers and partner models, expanded industry focus, and configurability to meet the needs of organizations of all sizes.


• In May 2023, Acquia was named a 2023 SIIA CODiE Award Finalist for Best Digital Asset Management Solution (DAM).


• In May 2023, TrustRadius recognized Acquia Digital Experience Platform (DXP) and Acquia Digital Asset Management (DAM) (Widen) with 2023 Top Rated Awards. Acquia has won top honors across 10 categories.


• In May 2023, Acquia appointed Jennifer Griffin Smith as Chief Market Officer (CMO). 


• In March 2023, Acquia announced that, for the fourth consecutive year, it had been positioned by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Digital Experience Platforms (DXP) for Acquia Open DXP. 


• Acquia acquired Widen on September 8, 2021. 

News and Press Releases

• June 23, 2023: Acquia and the Art of the Possible: Interview with Chief Market Officer Jennifer Griffin Smith (Read)


• June 15, 2023: Acquia Enhances Digital Experience Platform to Power Omnichannel Customer Journeys (Read)


• June 5, 2023: Acquia Supports Drupal Innovation as a Presenting Sponsor at DrupalCon North America 2023 (Read)


• May 24, 2023: Acquia DAM Drives Creative Collaboration with AI Assistant (Read)


• 11 May, 2023: Drupal Takes a Step Forward in Accessibility with Automated Testing Integration (Read)


• March 10, 2023: Acquia Enhances DAM System With New Integrations (Read)

Competitors

Sitecore

Sitecore is a provider of a digital experience platform that combines a content management system (CMS) with contextual intelligence, omnichannel automation, and marketing tools. It is built on Microsoft.NET and SQL Server and allows for integrations with third-party tools. It aims to empower brands to deliver unforgettable interactions with their customers across every touchpoint. It is the world’s leading.NET CMS, according to both Gartner and Forrester.

Jahia

Jahia is a software company that offers enterprise products, services, and technical support for its open-source digital experience platform. Jahia’s platform provides content and customer data management. The company believes in the power of collective intelligence and actively gives back to its communities. Jahians have contributed to the Apache Foundation for many years.

Optimizely

Optimizely is an American company that provides digital experience platform software as a service. Optimizely provides A/B testing and multivariate testing tools, website personalization, and feature toggle capabilities, as well as web content management and digital commerce.

Adobe

Adobe Inc., originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the creation and publication of a wide range of content, including graphics, photography, illustration, animation, multimedia/video, motion pictures, and print.

Salesforce

Salesforce is a cloud-based software company that provides customer relationship management services and also sells a complementary suite of enterprise applications focused on customer service, marketing automation, analytics, and application development.

Corporate Responsibility

Acquia is committed to active Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) stewardship and corporate social responsibility (CSR). The company believes that technology is a key to a better future for all—stronger economies, a healthier environment, and more diverse and inclusive communities. Acquia believes that technology is the key to a better future for all—stronger economies, a healthier environment, and more diverse and inclusive communities.

The company recognizes the opportunity and responsibility it has to make a positive impact on the world through each and every one of its business decisions. Acquia has set the following ESG goals: reduce its carbon footprint by 100% by 2050, with a 50% reduction by 2030; support community projects that empower people to improve their own livelihoods; and promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in all of its business practices.

Environmental

Carbon Footprint Reduction

Acquia is committed to reducing their carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 and being 100% Carbon Neutral by 2050. This includes all parts of their emissions, from their business travel, product delivery, and facilities. They’’ll do this in a number of different ways, but always by using accredited partners with certified offset, reclamation, or removal projects.

Fighting Deforestation One Tree at a Time

In particular, they’ve partnered with Tree Nation on tree planting projects in Indonesia and Mozambique. In both of these areas, deforestation had left the coastlines barren and exposed to natural disasters. Acquia’s goal is to not only replant mangroves that have been removed by humans over the years, but also to help educate communities on a more sustainable way of living.

Social

Supporting Community Projects that Empower

Acquia is committed to delivering real change by empowering people to improve their own livelihoods. They want to help society as a whole produce cleaner energy with less barriers to entry. With community based projects at the heart of what we do, Acquia is helping increase access to cheaper, renewable energy sources in places where it’s needed most.

Making Solar Energy More Accessible

In partnership with Cool Effect, they’re supporting 40,000 rural, off-grid households with solar power. Utilizing unique technology from the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras to help use a direct capture system for solar panels, they’’re helping to remove the requirement for an inverter and therefore reducing the cost of solar panel installation.

Doubling Down on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

At Acquia they value the differences in their life experiences and viewpoints. They believe that cultivating and supporting a diverse, global team is directly tied to their success as an organization, fueling innovation, productivity and business outcomes. They work closely with inclusion-focused organizations like Black Girls Code, who work to create more opportunities for everyone within the technology field.