WebTrends Splits Off

[Brett_Tabke]

[webtrends.com...]

Francisco Partners, one of the world's largest technology-focused private equity funds, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the WebTrends business unit, a leading provider of web analytics, of NetIQ Corporation. The transaction is being undertaken with the full participation and support of the WebTrends management team, members of which will be investing in the new business together with Francisco Partners. Greg Drew, currently general manager of WebTrends, will continue to lead the business and will assume the role of president and chief executive officer of the new standalone WebTrends business.

[rj87uk]

<edit>That link doesnt seem to be working?</edit>

Its ok now :)

[McElvoy]

This sounds like good news for the customer and I'll bet the WebTrends people are pretty pleased also --- no more HQ in another state, and the luxury of having deep pockets and not shareholders or a parent co in a different industry to answer to.

[trader]

I would be more interested if not for the fact Webtrends is so costly vs other stats programs, either much lower priced or free.

Several yrs ago they only asked $69 for it, then $99 for a long time, but later increased that price by 10 fold or more since then.

I also found their support very poor when I was a customer in the past. Most of my emails for support were ignored.

[McElvoy]

Things change. The old WebTrends product has little resemblance to the new one, which now is clearly in the top end performance class. Their tech support is far better (yes, used to be terrible) and submitted SR's usually are resolved within 24 hours in my recent experience. The company seems to have made a strategic decision to move out of the entry level category some time ago. If you only need $69 of product features, look elsewhere, but I don't think the current WebTrends can be compared any more to those entry products. (Their entry product is now five fold not ten fold more) It's funny how WebTrends is penalized for once having been so cheap.

[trader]

I may be too high (or upon review even way too low) when I said a 10 fold price increase. Was basing that on memory from a couple yrs ago.

When I owned it for $69 (later $99) they allowed unlimited number of sites, unlimited installs, and no support cost or extra charge for ongoing support.

Can you get that with the $595 version or do you need the $3,495 program, or $9,995 version? Now I see they also impose a limit on number of page views, someting they did not do in the past from what I recall.

I doubt if it's really that much better and worth that much money when AWstats or Weblizer is free?

[bobdole]

The $69/$99 version you are referring to was an slimmed down version of the software sold to hosting providers, some of which gave it away free. While there where no technical limits to the number of sites or installs that the software allowed, these restrictions where in place in license agreement at the time.

As far as support, they have always charged for support, but they never enforced making you have that support contract to contact them.

The $595 version of the software can do far more than the old mom&pop bargin version that was available years ago. You can always get a trial of the new version and play around with it yourself to see if the new features are worth it to you.

The licensing changed to the page view licening to force companies to purchace the correct version of the software to stay in line with the licening agreement. It used to be done on a physical server basis, but that was too easy for large companies to buy the entry level product to produce large reports on web farms and to try and curve the reselling of the entry level reports by companies that where forbidden by the license agreement.

As a side note, that $69/$99 version was never supposed to be supported by the webtrends technical support, it was supposed to be supported by the hosting provider that sold it to you as per the contract with the hosting providers at the time.

-b

[trader]

That is not correct information. They were marketing it extensively to end users at the time which is how I heard about it. I purchased it direct from Webtrends and paid them for it. No hosting firm ever offered it to me. Plus support from webtrends was indeed included with it or I would not have purchased it (though the support I got was not good).

[chewy]

I got my first copy from egghead (the store not the online site) for $ 25.00.

[Mardi_Gras]

Gee, you guys had me interested in Webtrends. I was about to download the trial version of the small business version ($495) until I checked out the system requirements:

Processor: 2.0 GHz
RAM: 1 GB
Hard Disk: IDE ¦ 7200 ¦ 50 GB Usable

A gig of RAM and 50 megs of space available? We're talking a dedicated machine here, and a fairly new one at that. Those are some requirements.

[Adam_T]

I think it is a very good piece of software ableit verys expensive, and yes, a dedicated machine really is a must have. I do however think charging 'per pageview' is awfully cheeky and quite bad, Nettracker's charge 'per license' is a far better method of pricing, not milking the customer for every penny.

[mattglet]

If you intend to heavily use WebTrends, I HIGHLY suggest you have 2gb of RAM. I can't stress that enough.