Mobile publishing service Pressly gets $1.5M to turns sites into apps

Source: Jolie O'Dell | venturebeat.com

Pressly, a service for turning your big, dumb website into a pretty, shiny HTML5 mobile experience, has just raised $1.5 million in funding.

The funding comes from iNovia Capital and OMERS Ventures. This is the startup’s first round.

Companies pay between $200 and $500 per month for the Pressly treatment, which takes the customer’s content and their hand-picked template and churns out an HTML app for smartphones and tablets. Current customers include Ziff Davis, The Economist, Toyota, IBM, and The Toronto Star.

The funding will be used for marketing to expand that client roster and start building up Pressly’s kingdom of HTML5 content apps.

“We love that Pressly gives content publishers a low-risk, low-friction way to take their business to the mobile world and experiment. The times are changing, and that’s what’s needed to succeed,” said Pressly CEO Jeff Brenner in a statement on the news.

Pressly first launched in 2011 and is based in Toronto.

Elvis Presley 1956 publicity still from “Love Me Tender”/RCA Records.