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ToolsinaWelcome to Ertano.
Our journey began in 2015, in the shadow of the columns of Persepolis — where we came to believe that the grandeur of building lives on in the craft of making websites that last. On that belief we built a tool for creating websites, sturdy enough that more than 30,000 active sites now stand on it, and we have published over 2,200 tutorials so site owners never let the fire of learning go out.
The Ertano Story
2009 — Before Ertano
For about six years, Reza Rad had been taking on web design projects through his own site (expres.ir). Alongside that work, he wrote up what he learned as tutorials and published them there.
As the projects piled up, he rented a room in a friend's office. After a while, to teach WordPress to his web design clients, he decided to publish step-by-step video tutorials. They were very well received — and they shut the business down! Why?
2015 — Ertano is born
Because the free step-by-step WordPress course was so well received, he decided to tear the old Express site down completely and start over on a new one, devoted to teaching. He rented a 40 m² office. A fresh start — and walking away from a comfortable income to do it!
November 2015 — Break-even
Three months in, revenue from the courses and the other products webmasters were buying covered the office rent and the rest of the costs. We had reached break-even.
2016 — First birthday
One year old! We held a small first-birthday gathering, and it made us realise there was a lot more room to grow in Shiraz — worth a 50 km move. We forgot to mention that everything so far had happened in Marvdasht, the town beside Persepolis. So we moved into a 16 m² room in a shared office in Shiraz, because renting a whole office still did not match what the site was earning.
May 2017 — A 130 m² office
Finally, after six months in that 16 m² room, we moved into a 130 m² office. Revenue had reached a comfortable level, so it was time to grow the team — we became a team of ten. We put up a 36-metre mast with the help of two ISPs to get the bandwidth the team needed, and a 40U rack to host the site's servers.
August 2017 — Second birthday
Two years old! We got together with some of our users and the wider team. By now 10,000 people were using our services and products, and we had set up a dedicated room for recording new courses.
April 2018 — Rework
We started hiring remotely to bring in experienced people from all over the country — team members from Ahvaz to Mashhad. A serious rework was due. We realised we did not need the 36-metre mast or servers hosted in the office at all. And that a bigger team does not necessarily mean the work goes better!
August 2018 — Third birthday
We were so deep in the rework that we never got around to celebrating the third birthday. The results were already starting to show!
October 2018 — New home, and the rework pays off
We moved into a new home and things ran more smoothly. Building proper systems was paying off — though the content team still needed more people. By the way: thanks to the new support system, daily tickets dropped from 100 a day to 40.
August 2019 — Fourth birthday
Four years old! Still at the beginning of the road, and still capable of much better. We were glad that 22,500 people were now using our services and products.
November 2020 — COVID-19
From early 2020 the pandemic hit businesses hard, so we decided to carry on fully remote. We spent those eight months working through it, and our team became people working without geographic borders. We also merged all our themes into a single multi-purpose theme so we could focus.
August 2021 — Sixth birthday
Six years old, with more than 35,000 people using our products. We have our own theme — Ahura — which is without doubt one of the best site builders anywhere. And yes: it is not just a WordPress theme. It is a site builder in the fullest sense, with hundreds of genuinely good features, and it took us several years to build. By now more than 1,500 students had used our complete website course to launch their own online business.
April 2022 — The Dubai office
To take the work global, we opened in Dubai and began trading internationally as Ertano. Serving our original Persian-speaking users stayed a priority throughout. The team keeps working remotely from across the country, so we can build better products for a worldwide audience.
December 2023 — Progress…
By now we had reached the thing we set out to build: products that are entirely our own, and a team working remotely from all over, in touch every day about making those products better. We publish new material in both Persian and English so we can help more people find their way into web design. And we know there is always room to be better — we try to be, a little more each day.
September 2025 — Stability
Ten years old. A stable business whose only aim is to stay stable and keep improving what it makes. We have not added a single new product in the last four years — just improvement, and more improvement. What we have now runs with a zero error rate, and we are still refining and updating those same products. We intend to keep it that way.
We are Datasaz.
It starts with our forebears — the Karpati craftsmen of the Achaemenid era — who, with orderly minds and extraordinary precision, raised columns that are still standing thousands of years later. They built with stone and wood; we build with data and code. In Persian, dadeh means knowledge and understanding, and saz means to build and to create. We chose the name because being a Datasaz is not a job, it is an outlook: building with thought, order and imagination. Being proud of where we come from and building what comes next. At Ertano we are Datasaz — carrying on from those ancient builders, only our tools have changed. Instead of a chisel and hammer, we have a laptop and WordPress.
What Ertano is for
We are trying to be a global home for learning WordPress. A reference that produces genuinely first-hand articles and products for the whole world, rather than translating someone else's articles or copying someone else's products.
We have a fundamental criticism of the culture around online business and making money online: a culture that, instead of teaching the fundamentals of earning, mostly delivers motivational talk. It shows off luxury cars and houses and promises to make you rich. In reality, wealth and success come only from learning, growing and staying at it.
Why purple?
Using purple at Ertano is a way of sending a warm greeting to our cultural and historical roots, while saying that we are keeping pace with everyone else in technology and innovation. Purple is a distinctive colour — something of a national symbol, and at the same time a sign of creativity and nerve. With it we want to show that Ertano both respects where it came from and is pushing ahead with new ideas.
