UppSite offers publishers a one-stop shop for creating mobile apps

The number of people consuming web content on mobile devices is growing at a rapid pace. The same can’t be said for the publishers that only offer mobile users a desktop-optimized site, which can make pages load slower and cause content to display incorrectly or not at all.

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UppSite, one of the startups presenting at VentureBeat’s 2012 DEMO spring conference on Wednesday, has an easy solution for these sites. Its service will optimize a publisher’s website across multiple mobile platforms by creating native applications for iOS, Windows Phone, Android, and even a standard web app.

“Any web publisher, big or small, that understands the power of the mobile era will find UppSite to be the perfect one stop shop for all their mobile needs,” said founder and CEO Gal Brill. His company’s strategy is basically “taking care of every part of the (mobile development) process, leaving the publisher no need to do any part of it.”

Brill took the DEMO stage Wednesday and demonstrated that UppSite can take a web URL and create a fully functional, native application ready to download in less than five minutes. “Time is not an aspect,” he said.

Brill said UppSite is offering the service to a market of over 200 million potential clients. Mind you, I don’t think this is the option that a large web-publisher would choose. But, for hundreds of smaller outlets (specific-genre news sites, local newspapers, etc.) that only want to focus on creating content, this is a great way to ensure readers aren’t put off by the lack of a mobile-friendly site.

The apps are likely to be similar in structure and user experience design, so competing publishers that use UppSite may end up having mobile apps that look about the same (unless they pay up). However, the product bridges a gap between the regular web and mobile that’s pretty crucial for continued traffic growth.

Publishers can choose from three types of payment options: a free conversion that gives all mobile ad revenue to UppSite, a $9.99 per-month option with a 50 percent ad revenue split with UppSite, and a high-end enterprise solution that can be customized with UppSite as a per-demand, per-month option that allows the site owner to fully control the application.

“There’s a real market need for this,” Benchmark Capital general partner Bill Gurley said in an investor panel following the demo. “If it works … there’s a ton of small businesses that would love to be able to do this,’ he added, pointing out that UppSite also has a high acquisition likelihood.

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Founded in 2010, the startup has eight employees based in Tel-Aviv, Israel. UppSite has raised a total of $550,000 in funding to date from startup incubator The Time innovation. It faces competition from a handful of competitors, including Appmakr, Duda Mobile, Conduit Mobile.

Check out the company’s demo video embedded below:

UppSite is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

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