Making websites fun again
For more than 10 years, we've been dedicated to making it easier and more affordable
for businesses to have a beautiful and effective website.
It wasn’t easy, until four guys from a small town in
New Zealand hatched a brilliant plan to streamline the website creation process and bring it into the 21st century, for everyone, not just the tech-savvy.
"It’s still quite astonishing to us that we’ve managed to achieve what we have, being a small team, in a small town," says Grant.
Rocketspark launched in 2009, from a student flat in Hamilton, New Zealand.
Rocketspark was founded by brothers Jeremy and Grant Johnson, along with good mates Richard King and Lee Reichardt who all graduated from the same university at different times, and with a range of backgrounds in management, web design and ecommerce. The four had been working together as designers and developers building websites and through their own experiences, saw an opportunity to create a platform that enabled websites to be built more easily and cost-effectively by the customer—putting business owners in control of their online presence.
Providing opportunities to students is important to us.
We're passionate about our ability to nurture the next generation and discover talent that wants to grow with us, we’re international and constantly growing and so we're in the position to provide opportunities to local graduates and even high school students.
Rocketspark HQ is in Cambridge, New Zealand with a few team members working remotely in NZ and offshore in Australia. If you're interested in joining the team, head over to our careers page to see what positions we have available.
After 10 years in business, Rocketspark is a dynamic, diverse team of software developers, designers & customer success people.
We believe that every small business can have the world's best website.
We exist to create a better life for small business owners, our partners, the Rocketspark team, and the world around us through our beautifully simple software, services, and passion to go above and beyond for our people.
With customers in 27 countries
Introducing the Rocketspark Design Partner network
DIY isn't necessarily for everyone,
particularly those with time restraints.
Initially we would design websites for customers if they didn’t want to do-it-themselves. Over time, we’ve evolved to referring, or matching customers with trusted Rocketspark Design Partners.
Our close relationships with designers and marketers prompted us to create Rocketspark Design Studio where designers can log in and build websites for their clients. Once up and running they're able to continue to access their clients’ websites to conduct any updates or maintenance when required.
Funding the idea
We’ve bootstrapped Rocketspark which means that we’ve used our revenue and personal funds to create the business.
It certainly takes plenty of small monthly subscriptions to pay the bills and grow a high performing team. The lean times in the early years really helped us focus on creating the most important features and looking after our clients well.
Since 2018 we have received funding from the New Zealand Government via Callaghan Innovation which supports our research and development programme.
We get independently reviewed annually by Deloitte as part of our current Callaghan growth grant funding and it’s a nice vote of confidence when an auditor goes through your financial undie draw and is happy to recommend to the government that your business is sound.
We’ve helped hundreds of not-for-profits and organisations to get online.
We’ve provided websites at no cost when they've been strapped for cash, and we regularly provide a discounted rate that is specific to organisations.
We want your business to be successful
We were stoked to bring home the Best Customer Service award at the 2018 Waipa Networks Business Awards.
When we walk out of our office door and instantly see dozens of clients, this local concentration of customers flows through to how we look after clients around the world. Being rated five stars across multiple review sites with the word ‘support’ often mentioned in the reviews is no fluke. When you put your heart into something it’s awesome to see it recognised and applauded.
In 2021 Rocketspark won the Excellence in Large Business category award at the Waipa Networks Business Awards, and also took out the highly sort-after Supreme award. Learn more.
Priding ourselves on great support, we take it personally when we get it wrong. We aim to evolve with our customers; we always appreciate feedback and strive to continue being beautifully simple everyday. Our customer success team love hearing the amazing ideas that our customers come up with and we capture all the feedback as we continually improve our website builder.
Rocketspark has also won the add-on innovation award at the UK Xero awards.
Our integration with Xero allows our customers to link their online store with Xero, making for tidy bookkeeping. Orders automatically flow through into Xero as invoices, streamlining the payment reconciliation process.
