Passmarked is a South African startup that has developed an open-source website testing tool to identify errors and issues in web code and suggest corrections. It tests websites across four key risk areas: security, performance, compatibility across devices, and content. The tool addresses the major problem that most of the billion existing websites were built by novices with limited coding knowledge and contain errors. Passmarked aims to harness the global coding community to fix issues and establish universal web standards to make the internet safer, more accessible and business-friendly.

1. DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017 FASTCOMPANY.CO.ZA 4746 FASTCOMPANY.CO.ZA DECEMBER 2016/JANUARY 2017
Serendipity is often the
spark behind the most
revolutionary and
innovative products. This
was no different for local
startup Passmarked.com.
What started out as their
own fix for various
problems within a single
website’s code, led
Passmarked’s founders
on a journey of discovery—
not only of how flawed the
Internet is as a sum of its
billions of imperfect parts
but of a big-picture
solution that would bring
together the global coding
fraternity to unite behind
the cause of improved
global web standards.
With open-sourced
access to a repository of
all web code, Passmarked
serves to identify errors
and issues and suggest
corrections simultaneously
in a way never before seen
on the Internet.
The problem is that the
Internet is broken—and
no one knows it. There are
about a billion websites
today, with most built by
DIY novices with limited
knowledge of security,
mobile compatibility and
other performance issues.
And that’s bad news,
considering about 80%
of connected devices are
mobile, and that modern
humans do almost
everything online:
shopping, banking and
running their businesses.
Passmarked enables
one to test a website’s four
key risk areas—security,
performance, compatibility
across devices, and
content—to identify errors
and solutions in a flash. It’s
the first and only all-in-one,
free, open-sourced, website-
testing tool in the world.
Coders, website owners
or anyone interested in
testing a website can enter
its URL on the Passmarked
home page. The program
then runs the quick four-
category test and
immediately issues a nifty
report card showing the
tester exactly where the
issues in the code are, by
category, and how to fix
them. Any website can be
tested, and the results are
open to the public.
Passmarked has a basic
version that’s “free for
humans forever”, and
more advanced versions
for more complex jobs.
As with most
companies that have a
fundamental global
appeal, Passmarked
is underpinned by a
philosophy based on
making a difference to
the whole problem at its
root cause, not simply the
symptoms. “Passmarked
has a big role to play in
making the Internet a
safer, more transparent,
accessible and business-
friendly environment for
people all around the
PASSMARKED
SA’S MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES
For fixing
the Internet
world,” says founder Barry
Botha (right). “In the age
of rapid digital migration,
mainly to mobile, it was
high time the world got
a tool like this.” His
co-founder and lead
technologist, Johann du
Toit (left), the first Google
Developer Expert in Africa,
adds: “Our goal is to
harness the power of
the global collective—the
crowd and the cloud—to
fix the Internet for today
and for future
generations.”
Botha explains that
Passmarked has the
potential to address
a multitude of inter-
connected problems
with the performance
of websites across the
worldwide web: from
making online shopping
portals faster and more
secure, to making the
mobile Internet more
responsive in Africa,
and quickly identifying
dangerous cybersecurity
issues on commonly
used sites.
“By pulling together
all the most important
and widely accepted
current web standards,
and inviting the world’s
coders to get involved to
contribute rules that they
believe will be beneficial
to the Internet community,
we’ll be able to create a
de facto universal global
benchmarking standard
for website performance,”
says Botha. “If a site gets
a high Passmarked score,
you know it meets
internationally accepted
standards that the
community agrees
with.”