rankingCoach raises €5 million from United Internet 

rankingCoach completes Funding Round

Marius Gerdan, and Daniel Wette, and Thomas Meierkord (from left to right),
Founders of rankingCoach GmbH

Cologne, Germany, March 28, 2017 — rankingCoach, one of the leading providers of cloud-based online marketing solutions for SMEs announced today the completion of  their funding round with United Internet as an investor. United Internet acquires 29.93% of the software provider, supporting further international growth, expansion of services, and establishment of an international brand. The transaction will be held by United Internet Investment Holding GmbH, and is subject to approval by the relevant antitrust authorities.

Online visibility and online reputation decisively influence the success of local businesses. rankingCoach offers local companies, target group specific, affordable, web-based solutions in every area of search engine optimization (SEO), search engine advertising (SEA), and social media. Which entails making all online marketing activities of a business simple and straightforward so that anyone can do it. 

"User-friendliness and easy to use cloud-based solutions are key success factors to keep up with small and medium enterprises which is exactly what rankingCoach has created with its online marketing solutions. With our investment, we would like to actively support future development of this success model. In addition, the rankingCoach Suite will ideally enhance the 1 & 1 product portfolio of cloud applications for small and medium enterprises."
— Frank Krause, United Internet's Chief Financial Officer 

Since its start, rankingCoach has grown rapidly and has been awarded as one of the fastest growing digital companies in Germany with a CAGR of 633% in 2015 by the online startup magazine, Gründerszene. Today, rankingCoach offers its products through direct channels and an existing reseller network in 24 countries and 11 languages. The upcoming launch of the rankingCoach Suite in 2017 will bring together the various products of the provider on one central platform.

"Over the last few years we managed to increase our user base and our reach exponentially. With the investment from United Internet we can now continue our growth strategy and establish an international brand. Our goal is to provide local companies around the world with a marketing suite, which helps to promote their business easily and efficiently  by themselves.” — Daniel Wette, CEO of rankingCoach

"With the financing round of United Internet, rankingCoach can further accelerate its strong growth and become a global player." — Frank Hölzle, CEO of Wecken & Cie./Care4

———

About rankingCoach GmbH
rankingCoach offers an online marketing suite that enables small and medium businesses to quickly and easily optimize their websites themselves - even without large marketing budgets or expertise in online marketing. rankingCoach is now available in 28 countries and 13 languages. Founded in 2012 by Daniel Wette, Marius Gerdan, and Thomas Meierkord, the company's headquarters is in Cologne and has multiple locations in Romania. A team of over 22 nationalities is working on the vision to 'simplify the complexity of online marketing and make it accessible to everyone'. The award-winning software solutions are also integrated with numerous well known webhosters and telecommunications companies such as Deutsche Telekom, Strato, 1&1 or KPN. Learn more about the rankingCoach at www.rankingcoach.com  

About United Internet

With 16.97 million fee-based customer contracts and 34.29 million ad-financed free accounts, United Internet AG is Europe’s leading internet specialist. At the heart of United Internet is a high-performance “Internet Factory” with approx. 8,100 employees, of which around 2,600 are engaged in product management, development, and data centers. In addition to the high sales strength of its established brands (1&1, GMX, WEB.DE, united-domains, Fasthosts, Arsys, home.pl, InterNetX, Sedo, affilinet, and 1&1 Versatel), United Internet stands for outstanding operational excellence with around 51 million customer accounts worldwide.

About Wecken & Cie. KG

Wecken & Cie. was founded at the end of 2010 in Basel. As a family office it brings together the interests of Klaus Wecken and his family. Today the portfolio covers more than 30 investments, mainly in the areas of Internet, Software, Optical technologies, medTech and venture and private equity funds. In addition to rankingCoach they hold a stake in companies like Jedox, Rebuy, EcoIntense, Navabi, SIC-Invent, Cynora, herman ze german. They also focus on investments in real estate companies such as Adler Real Estate AG and demire AG. The interests are intensively monitored and overseen by its own management company Care4 AG in Basel with Frank Hoelzle as CEO and his team.