In 2025, our finances and structures developed more positively than ever before. Our strong team is growing, and we are expanding our network. Welcome to our Open Startup Year in Review 2025.
Contents
Our customers
In 2025, we further sharpened our market positioning. Today, we present ourselves even more clearly as a company that consistently stands for data privacy, Swiss security and quality – while also providing friendly, accessible, and competent support. This clarity has strengthened our brand and is increasingly visible externally.
This became evident in the new customers we were able to welcome last year. They include a Swiss private bank and a large Swiss health insurance provider, as well as Gebäudeversicherung Luzern, Theater Chur, and the municipality of Riehen. We also welcomed several healthcare organizations, an electrical wholesaler, a continuing education provider, a youth organization, a law firm, and several IT companies.
We are especially pleased by the diversity of these organizations – it shows that our approach works in very different contexts.
We were never completely satisfied with the privacy provisions of Google Analytics. We decided to use Friendly Analytics because the data is hosted entirely in Switzerland. We find the transparent, competent and above all personal advice very positive. We were particularly impressed by the short response time for individual inquiries.
Martin Niederberger
Head of Communications
We would like to thank all our customers for the trust they place in us.
A particular highlight for us is that Mautic itself has become one of our customers. Mautic is the open-source software that powers Friendly Automate and thus forms a central foundation of our work. Since December 2025, we have been the official host of Friendly Analytics for the Mautic project.
Companies are not required to give back to the open-source projects they benefit from. For us, however, we choose to show our appreciation. That is why we provide Friendly Analytics to the Mautic community free of charge – as a small contribution to the ecosystem that makes our work possible.
Finances: Moving toward MRR profitability
2025 was a year of growth for Friendly, particularly in terms of MRR, the recurring revenue from our software subscriptions.
After strong growth in 2020 and 2021, MRR growth slowed considerably between 2022 and 2024. We continued to grow, but step by step. In 2025, that dynamic changed noticeably: our MRR increased from CHF 22 171 at the end of 2024 to CHF 34 526 at the end of 2025 – a growth rate of 46%.
A key factor was the strategic decision in spring 2025 to offer Friendly Automate only to new Enterprise customers. In the short term, this led to stagnation in MRR. After a few months, however, it became clear that this move sharpened our positioning and strengthened our long-term growth.
Since launching consulting services in 2022, that part of the business has played an important role in stabilizing our finances. In 2025, consulting revenue reached a natural plateau, limited by our available capacity.
This development aligns with our strategy. Our goal is to become fully MRR-profitable soon, meaning consulting revenue will no longer be required to cover fixed costs but will instead be additive.
In the medium term, we plan to handle larger customer implementation projects increasingly through agency partnerships, allowing us to focus on our core business: reliably operating our software and providing direct support.
| 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| TRR | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 156 327 CHF | 188 691 CHF | 234 589 CHF | 340 386 CHF |
| Consulting | 0 | 0 | 18 385 CHF | 90 313 CHF | 122 191 CHF | 142 469 CHF |
| Annual Revenue | 26 823 CHF | 117 391 CHF | 174 712 CHF | 279 004 CHF | 356 780 CHF | 482 855 CHF |
| Costs | - 52 672 CHF | - 133 038 CHF | - 205 736 CHF | - 266 038 CHF | - 321 850 CHF | - 424 917 CHF |
| Annual profit/loss | - 25 849 CHF | - 15 647 CHF | - 31 024 CHF | + 12 966 CHF | + 34 930 CHF | + 57 938 CHF |
| Total profit/loss | - 25 849 CHF | - 41 496 CHF | - 72 520 CHF | - 59 554 CHF | - 24 625 CHF | + 33 313 CHF |
In 2025, we also reached an important milestone in our overall business development. We have posted a positive annual result since 2023, and since February 2024 we have been profitable every single month.
In June 2025, we were finally able to offset the accumulated losses from our early years. Since then, our cumulative result over the entire history of the company has been positive. As of the end of 2025, our total cumulative profit stands at CHF 33 313.
“I’m proud of what our team achieved in 2025. Our finances and structures have developed more positively than ever before. I’m looking forward to 2026.”
Stefan Vetter, our CEO
Taken together, these developments show that our model is increasingly standing on its own. Recurring revenue is gaining weight, fluctuations are decreasing, and we are moving closer to our goal of building Friendly as a stable and independent company for the long term.
Products: Major upgrade, growing interest
Our product portfolio remained stable in 2025. We continued to focus on our two core products: the marketing automation software Friendly Automate and the web analytics platform Friendly Analytics.
For Friendly Automate, 2025 was defined by a major and important upgrade. The underlying open-source software, Mautic, was updated from version 4 to version 5. This was more than a typical version update – the entire codebase was fundamentally reworked.
Due to the depth of this transition, the upgrade required significant resources over an extended period. It was demanding, but necessary. We managed the process well, and the upgrades are now largely complete.
Read more about the technical background and all new features of Mautic 5 in our blog post.
At the same time, we further refined the Friendly Automate design. Our goal is to provide customers with an optimized and even more cohesive user experience.
While Friendly Automate was shaped by this major technical step, demand for Friendly Analytics continued to grow steadily in 2025 – from the affordable and feature-rich Essential plan to the Professional plan for growing companies and the highly customizable Enterprise configuration.
Explore all Friendly Analytics plans and pricing here.
Digital sovereignty and data privacy continue to gain importance. As data breaches and security incidents at major tech companies regularly make headlines, awareness is growing. Swiss-hosted open-source software offers clear advantages in this context. This positioning continues to open up a relevant and growing market for us.
In 2025, our team evolved noticeably.
After many years in which the primary business responsibility rested with Stefan, we were finally able to broaden the management structure. As of March 2025, Lukas Sigel took on the additional role of COO (Chief Operating Officer) alongside his existing role as CCO (Chief Customer Officer). Since then, Stefan and Luke have worked closely together on strategic, operational, and organizational matters.
“It was an important step for us to distribute responsibility more broadly. I’m pleased to be contributing more actively to shaping and further developing Friendly for the long term.”
Lukas Sigel, our COO & CCO
This has been a significant relief for Stefan and had an immediate, long-overdue effect: for the first time since founding Friendly, he was able to take a full vacation and truly switch off.
In March 2025, Lukas Frei also joined our customer team. He quickly found his footing and soon took on his own projects and customer responsibilities. At the end of 2025, he will leave Friendly again. We explained the background in our Open Startup Report for December 2025 and wish Lukas all the very best.
A highlight each year is our Friendly Retreat. In June 2025, we met for the fifth time – this time in the Lavaux region – celebrating Friendly’s fifth anniversary. We enjoyed the conversations, the hike through the vineyards, and the shared experiences. We look back on it fondly and are already looking forward to the next retreat.
From summer 2025 onward, we were also able to expand capacity in our technical and Analytics teams. We intensified our collaboration with Peter, who is involved in several new Analytics Enterprise projects. In October 2025, Matic increased his workload with us. His strong programming skills are already making a visible impact.
Looking ahead to 2026, we are especially pleased that Matic will make Friendly his primary employer and further increase his workload. We’re proud to have him take on this expanded role with us. His focus on automation continues to move us forward operationally and qualitatively.
«Let’s make 2026 the strongest year Friendly has seen so far!»
Matic Zagmajster, our talented developer
At the same time, we are preparing a significant expansion of our customer team. The new Customer Success Specialist role is close to being filled.
Partnerships: Expanding our network
Our stronger focus on Enterprise customers brings specific requirements. Enterprise clients often need individual customizations, complex setups, or prefer to outsource implementation to experienced experts.
Although we do offer consulting ourselves, our core focus remains clear: we want to position ourselves as a SaaS company built on recurring revenue (MRR). We see our primary role in providing a reliable, secure, and sustainable software environment and maintaining it technically over the long term. Becoming a traditional agency is not the path we intend to pursue.
With this in mind, we expanded our agency partnerships in 2025. We were especially pleased to begin collaborating with Vass (Liestal) and Unic (Bern, Zurich, and further offices in Germany and Poland), who have already referred valuable customers to us. The collaboration delivers real value for all parties involved.
Depending on the project, we support the technical implementation, while the agency handles strategic and operational execution. We plan to continue strengthening this network in 2026.
Here you can find all our partner agencies.
Interested in an agency partnership? Get in touch with us.
We are also closely connected to the open-source communities behind our products. In the Matomo ecosystem (Friendly Analytics), Peter has been part of the core team for over ten years.
In the Mautic community, Joey and Matic are actively involved. In November 2025, Joey, Luke, and Matic attended the Mautic World Conference in London, where they engaged in in-depth discussions, contributed to talks, and participated in the community sprint.
These events help us stay close to the software’s development and contribute meaningfully.
Another important part of our partnership approach is the active exchange with other commercial Mautic providers. We deliberately foster knowledge sharing and mutual support rather than competition. In some cases, we refer customers to one another when a project is a better fit elsewhere. We maintain a particularly close professional exchange with the German Mautic provider Leuchtfeuer.
These partnerships help us deliver sustainable, high-quality solutions without losing sight of our focus.
Marketing: Substance over noise
In 2025, our marketing continued to prioritize substance over volume.
“I hold myself to the standard of not publishing interchangeable, AI-generated content that already exists everywhere. I only write when I’ve taken the time to think things through and can provide real value that I stand behind.”
Kathrin Schmid, our CMO & CISO
Thoughtful content requires time and focus – these are limited, especially since Kathrin combines marketing responsibilities with her role as CISO and ISO lead.
We published three new case studies in 2025: with bofrost* suisse (for Friendly Analytics), Arbeitgeber Banken and ANAXAM (both for Friendly Automate).
These insights into real customer projects are central to our communication because they show how our software works in practice – and how personal support makes a difference.
One customer put it this way:
The other day I called Lukas with a problem and he informed Peter directly. The problem was solved within two hours – that’s never happened to me before. That’s very special. Try to reach someone at Google, have fun.
Livia Schwander
Digital Marketing Manager
You can find the three new case studies here.
We also published two in-depth blog articles: one on the release of Mautic 5 and another on Swiss alternatives to Google Analytics.
In 2025, we continued publishing our monthly Open Startup Reports. In fall, however, we decided to discontinue the monthly format by the end of the year.
As our business has matured and financial fluctuations decreased, the value of monthly reporting declined.
Starting in 2026, we will publish quarterly reports instead. This will also free up capacity for other meaningful content.
More on this in our Open Startup Report for December 2025.
Finally, in December 2025, our new website went live – thanks to the initiative and outstanding creativity of Nicolas Previdoli, who surprised us in spring with a compelling open sales pitch.
Annual goals: Visible progress
As part of our ongoing quality improvement under ISO 27 001 and ISO 9 001 – alongside many other internal initiatives – we defined a series of clearly measurable annual goals for 2025. We achieved several of them and partially achieved others. All of them served their purpose: helping us prioritize, make progress visible, and regularly reflect on what we are working toward.
One particularly meaningful milestone was increasing Stefan’s monthly salary to just over CHF 4 000 by year-end 2025. After years without a salary – and still only a symbolic CHF 1 000 at the start of the year – this marks an important step toward a sustainable structure.
The development of our profit margin is equally encouraging. In 2025, we reached our targeted annual margin of 12% exactly as planned.
Additionally, we improved support quality, slightly expanded consulting capacity, and maintained uptime of over 99.9% across our products.
One goal we deliberately postponed was the launch of a new product. Expanding our product portfolio remains a clear mid-term objective for us. In 2025, however, this was not realistic – primarily due to the unexpectedly high workload surrounding the upgrade to Mautic 5. As a matter of principle, we prioritize serving our existing customers reliably before launching new products or offerings. For that reason, we consciously moved this priority to a later stage.
Looking ahead to 2026, this objective remains in place – complemented by new initiatives. These include internal salary increases, further automation, and targeted team expansion.
Financially, we are targeting a profit margin of 10% for 2026 – a figure we have adjusted downward from the previously communicated 15% due to the upcoming investments in our team. At the same time, we plan to increase Stefan’s paid workload to 80%. We aim to grow our monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by at least another 30% in 2026 in order to comfortably cover the targeted margin and the anticipated costs.
Financial growth is not an end in itself for us. Our primary focus remains having satisfied customers and satisfied team members who enjoy working with us. We grow so that we have the resources to achieve that even better.
One final important goal concerns our infrastructure: in 2026, we aim to end our dependency on Amazon AWS, which we currently use for email delivery. The development of our own email infrastructure is already underway.
Outlook
We are entering the new year with good energy. As mentioned, we are currently in the middle of a recruiting process – something new for us in this form and a process that has required significant focus. We received more than 100 applications for our open position, many of them highly compelling. Kathrin invested considerable effort in building up her expertise in recruiting and, together with Luke, designed and implemented a structured selection process.
The process is now close to completion, and we look forward to welcoming a new team member soon.
Beyond that, we are looking ahead to 2026 with anticipation. We are excited about new customers, further partnerships, and the continued development of our product portfolio.
We also welcome the surprises and challenges that each year brings. They are making business life dynamic and engaging.
We genuinely enjoy working in the company we have built together. That sense of enjoyment is present in our daily work. As Joey put it:
“I’m looking forward to a great 2026 – with the most amazing team I’ve ever worked with!”
Joey Keller, our CTO
With that mindset, we step into the new year.
