Acquia to Acquire Monsido, Expanding Commitment to Digital Accessibility, Website Optimization, and Compliance

Adds industry-leading capabilities to Acquia’s open digital experience platform for building, managing, and delivering optimized and inclusive website experiences 

Acquia, the digital experience leader, and CivicPlusⓇ, a leader in public sector integrated technology solutions, today announced that Acquia has agreed to acquire the Monsido platform, a website accessibility and optimization solution from CivicPlus. Monsido is a leading SaaS platform for monitoring and perfecting website accessibility, content quality, search engine optimization (SEO), data privacy, and performance. This acquisition not only expands the capabilities of Acquia’s open digital experience platform, Acquia DXP, but also supports the company’s mission to help build a better digital future — one that is more inclusive, accessible, and sets new benchmarks for performance and innovation. CivicPlus is excited to retain and continue to serve its U.S. local government customers as a reseller. Acquia and CivicPlus made the announcement at Engage Boston, Acquia’s flagship event for digital innovators.

“Acquia’s vision is to deliver the most open DXP to enable our customers to improve their businesses by creating superior experiences”

Consumer expectations for digital experiences continue to rise as customers demand fast, intuitive, productive online interactions. A strong digital experience uplifts brands, builds loyalty and, in a crowded digital world, can be an organization’s main competitive advantage. With the acquisition of Monsido, Acquia now offers a complete solution for building, managing, and delivering digital experiences that are fully optimized to meet modern website standards and digital content guidelines and that comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and web accessibility legislation such as the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

“Acquia’s vision is to deliver the most open DXP to enable our customers to improve their businesses by creating superior experiences,” said Steve Reny, President and CEO of Acquia. “Monsido empowers digital marketers and website owners with an all-in-one suite of capabilities for website optimization and compliance. Used with any website or as part of Acquia DXP, Monsido helps make digital experiences more optimized, accessible, and inclusive, so organizations can fulfill legal and regulatory requirements, uphold social responsibility, and expand market reach.”

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Monsido is currently a business within CivicPlus, a top provider of government technology solutions. Thousands of organizations worldwide rely on Monsido for website optimization, including national and local governments, financial institutions, non-profits, culture and arts organizations, educational institutions, healthcare organizations, utilities, and transportation services. With the needs for accessibility in local government continuing to rise, following the close of the acquisition, CivicPlus will retain and continue to serve U.S. local government customers using the Monsido platform and become a reseller of Monsido to the U.S. local government territory and market. U.S. state and federal government and all other Monsido customers will become Acquia customers.

Brian Rempe, CEO of CivicPlus, said: “As the leading provider of accessibility solutions in the U.S., CivicPlus remains deeply committed to bringing accessible and inclusive technology to local governments. Through this partnership with Acquia, we will continue to make the Monsido solution and its accessibility, quality assurance, and web governance capabilities available to U.S. communities. At the same time, we recognize that accessible digital experiences are critically important for every interaction with every digital property, and we’re pleased to know that Acquia’s leadership of the Monsido solution will bring this powerful tool to more entities in more markets around the world. By forming this partnership, CivicPlus and Acquia will lead and empower greater adoption of accessible technology that creates positive digital interactions for all technology users.”

Acquia with Monsido Enhances Content Accessibility for Everyone

The addition of Monsido will help Acquia customers achieve even better business outcomes by helping every user, regardless of their abilities, to navigate the web more freely. Monsido enables the following types of optimization:

• Makes website content accessible to everyone: Helps organizations identify and fix accessibility issues on their websites, in compliance with accessibility standards.
• Improves website optimization and performance: Enables organizations to identify and fix website quality issues, such as broken links, missing images, and slow page loading times. This improves the experience for all visitors and can boost search engine rankings.
• Supports brand and content compliance: Uplifts brand reputation by helping to ensure that website content complies with brand guidelines.
• Manages user consent: Helps organizations manage user consent for cookies and other tracking technologies, supporting compliance with privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA.

Monsido can work with any content management system (CMS), including Drupal, the open source CMS that is the foundation of Acquia DXP. Users can navigate from a flagged issue in Monsido directly to the flagged page in their CMS with a click or use the Monsido Browser Extension while browsing their website to highlight issues directly on the page. Monsido will be available as part of Acquia DXP or as a standalone offering.

The transaction is expected to close in early Q1 2024. Acquia is backed by Vista Equity Partners, a leading global investment firm focused on enterprise software, data and technology-enabled businesses.

Today Acquia also announced strategic partnerships that, along with the acquisition of Monsido, create the most complete solution for digital experience optimization.

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