It’s kinda crazy to think, but our little internet startup, Envato, has been on the air now for five years. We started back in 2006 as four very enthusiastic and totally green entrepreneurs with a shoestring budget and a love of the web. Fast forward five years and while we’re hopefully a little less green, we’re still incredibly passionate about Education, Marketplaces and the web! It’s been an amazing time and we’d like to share a look inside our Melbourne HQ offices, some stats about Envato and a big thank you to the community.
Behind the Scenes
With such a big milestone, we thought it might be good to give an inside glimpse into our Melbourne HQ offices and some of the people that work here. So we invited a Melbourne film crew called Compulsive to come in and shoot a 3 minute video about Envato. I hope you enjoy it!
As you may know, we also have a large remote team working around the globe on our sites. Next year we’re hoping to gather all of Envato and as much of the community as possible for an epic meetup, but in the meantime if you’re curious to see who’s who, you can check out this little video from our remote staff meetup last year in Chicago.
Some Stats
Looking back at five years of exciting and sometimes exhausting Envato work, I put together some stats about Envato from our time online so far. In five years we have:
- Published over 10,000 tutorials and articles helping people learn everything from Photoshop to Freelancing
- Hosted over 300,000 items for sale on our marketplaces from WordPress themes to Stock Photos
- Showcased over 12,000 items of inspirational design, photography and a host of other creative mediums on Creattica
- Listed over 8,000 jobs on our freelance job board
- Reviewed and rounded up over 3,000 apps on our AppStorm network
- Launched 9 marketplaces, 11 tutorial sites, 9 blogs, 18 books, 7 bundles, 4 Regular Podcasts, and more social media accounts than you can poke a stick at
- Accumulated close to 1 million RSS subscribers and twitter followers
- Signed up almost 1 million marketplace members, 90,000 Creattica members, 50,000 FreelanceSwitch members, and 40,000 Tuts+ Premium subscribers
- Served up well over 1.5 billion pageviews across all our sites since inception
Holy toledo batman!!
Thank You
I can’t say thank you enough to all of you for supporting Envato all these years. Whether you are long-time user of the Marketplaces, Tuts+, AppStorm, FreelanceSwitch or Creattica, or just a casual visitor, we’re really proud that you stop in and use our sites. If you’re one of the thousands of contributors, authors, writers, and subscribers, we’re honored and humbled that you have helped us build this company and filled these sites with such amazing content. And regardless of who you are, we hope that we can continue to provide value and service to you for many more years to come!
On behalf of the whole team, thank you all!
Collis
CEO, Chief Tea Drinker and Web Designer Who Doesn’t Get to Design Anymore
Envato
P.S. If you’re not all video’d out, you can check out this video of one of our early Envato staff







Happy 5 years, Envato! You have changed many lives.
Great video, love to see how you guys work.
Here’s to 5 more!
Yay, Envato!
thank you envato
You guys are absolutely amazing. I’ve been a huge fan ever since the beginning, and will continue to be so forever. Thank you for all of your hard work and dedication to bringing forth your best, and giving us priceless knowledge that we’ll take with us wherever we go!
Wonderful job you did
Congratulations
My Best
Amazing, nice speech Naysan
Amazing! The video was awesome, and I’m proud to be part of the remote team. Here’s to an awesome next 5 years for Envato and the whole community!
What a whirlwind five years. I’ve been with Envato for half its life! Loved the video.
Awesome video
Hope to work in Envato too
I REALY love your office atmosphere in the Melbourne HQ.
If i ever had the chance to work there, that would be amazing. I’ve been in Australia for 12months, and it would be a dream to live there
You guys rocks, the workspace is cool!
Keep up the good work lads and ladies!
Amazing job..
love the video.
well done and thank you to Collis , who has made this awesome community and a big thanks to all of the stuffs who has worked tremendously hard to make this community work..
really appreciated.
let me work there
all the best
awesome
Happy 5 years and lots more ahead!!
In just 7 months you have (seriously) changed my life and helped me! I’m grateful to you guys!!
Best of the best for you!
Awesome five years! I hope the next five years will be amazing too. Nice video, by the way
Happy 5th Birthday, Envato!
awesome video.. very inspiring!
Great! I just have these questions:
1. Is Collis himself a developer or designer?
2. When they first made activeden (i think thats the first site they developed), did only collis and his wife
make it or he hired people to do it?
Please clear my confusion!
Hi Fahmid.
Both Collis and Cyan started as freelancers in the graphic design world. They even wrote a book about their experiences: How to be a Rockstar Freelancer.
When they started FlashDen they hired a developer Ryan Allen to build the site. You can read more about that in this interview.
I hope that helps!
Congratulations Collis & team, you guys totally rock and the future looks awesome!
Bravo! I’m Tanzanian and have been on psdtuts from almost day 1.
From admiring and learing… to actually doing and participating. I finally made the cut on Creattica and hope to make many more amazing artwork, apps… etc.
Awesome work. Regards to your team.
Thanks Adrian!
Happy birthday Envato!!
Happy 5 years, thank you and keep up the great work!
Great video
Congrats to all the Envato Staff, keep up the fantastic work. I wish I could join your team one day.
Congrats! When did these 5 years passed … :O It was like yesterday that I signed up on Audio Jungle … Keep up the great work !
Congrats !
Thank you Envato and Congrats on the 5 yr anniversary! I’m a big fan!
Thanks everyone at Envato – and Collis and Cyan!
You guys have really accomplished an amazing feat! You have awesome vision and have gathered very talented people needed to get it accomplished. Being an author has truly impacted my life in a great and positive way. Thanks for all you do.
Tim McMorris
Wow, what an amazing work you’ve done over all these years guys. Congratulations.
Happy birthday, Envato! It’s been a great two years for me on Marketplaces, I can only imagine your experience of five years! I can hardly wait to see what you planned for all of us in the (near and distant) future
Congratulations Envato Team!!! I am really loving everything Envato has been doing, Please keep up the amazing work.
Great video. Very inspiring. On September 1st. it is exactly 1 year since we launched our first plugin on Codecanyon. Best decision we ever made! Thank you Envato for providing this great opportunity.
Congratulations Envato! Very inspiring video. On September 1st it is exactly 1 year since we launched our first WordPress plugin on Codecanyon. Best decision we ever made!
Thank you for providing this great opportunity. Look forward to the next 5 years.
Happy birthday Envato! I’m so proud to be a part of such a great community and to have had the opportunity to contribute. I’m really looking forward to the next five years!
Happy B-day Envato!!!
That was a great video. Thanks Envato!
Congrats you guys!
Hopefully the next five years includes permanent 75% commission rates
I would quit my day job and work full time with the marketplaces if Envato instituted this. I guarantee many others would too.
Yay, Envato!
Thanks for all the amazing work you guys have done. At the risk of sounding dramatic, you quite literally have changed my life, and by extension, my wife and kid’s life. Keep up the great work.
No pressure ;-p
Happy birthday Envato!
And happy aniversary for me, been a reviewer for GraphicRiver for 2 years now! It’s still as awesome as my first day! Love my job!
Thank you Collis, Cyan and everyone else for giving me this opportunity!
I have only been an author for two months so far, but I have been around on this beautiful planet for sometime, and I know this: Envato is one of the most professional and polite companies I have ever had the pleasure of working with! Keep up the great work guys/gals!
Happy 5th anniversary Envato. After a brief chat with Collis nearly 18 months ago, I started a great side business on ThemeForest. It’s been a pleasure to give/receive feedback and watch the marketplaces evolve. Thanks for everything, cheers.
Working for Envato and with all of it’s employees has been such a blessing in my life. Happy Birthday Envato, here’s to many more years to come!
Wow, what a pleasure to read these comments!!
This community rocks!
u bet.
we all are Proud of you sir.
thank you, for everything.
Hi Collis,
congrats to you and your team! Having established so well after 5 years in the online business you definitely deserve to retire the “startup” hat and put the “booming company” cap in front of the entrance hall of your HQ
Chapeau!
Best from the other side of the world,
Michael
Congrats Collis, Cyan, Vahid, Jun and all the rest of the awesome Envato crew! Looking forward to your 10 year birthday!
I love you guys and I love Envato
all the best and congratulations!
With love,
Kasia & Rafal.
Congratulations on all of your success! We are extremely blessed to work with your marketplaces and other sites. You guys have figured it out!
Thanks,
Tyler
I’ve been rolled!!
Congrats to Collis and Team! 5 years of incredible Envato!
You guys are awesome, Envato powered thousands to learn and earn money from the knowledge you gave..
Ah, awesome video! Happy birthday. Take a breather and enjoy some celebration time. You guys deserve it!
I really believe in Envato’s markets!! They are the future of selling multimedial contents!
You guys rock!!
I live well as a freelancer thanks to this great company. Thank you!
Thanks for the great resources and community! Happy 5 years!
You guys have always inspire many small groups like ours with the things you have been doing for 5 Years. We wish you alot more these kind of years coming…
Thanks! You ROCKS!!
You have allowed me to save so much time for so many projects with your great wordpress templates, Flash and JavaScript files! Thank you.
Great video guys. Love your contribution.
I think it would be really cool to see some tech reviews. Exposing lesser known gems such as Concrete5 CMS/Framework.
Chad
Congrats Envato!
More than a user, I’m a fan
I think the video was an awesome idea.
Since people don’t have a face to face contact with you, I think making videos like this one is a great way to bring a more human touch to your relation with the community
Cheers,
Joao
A great story about your success. Working for Envato would be a dream job!! And I’d even move to Australia for that
Ye guys rock!!
I want Envato’s Logo on my tombstone.
HI ,
Really i’m interested to work for envato, may i know how to join envato, if i get chance surely i ll my level best.
You guys are just rocking over the web. Hats off to Envato
.