Go Daddy has acquired Outright, a cloud-based financial management company, in a bid to offer newer types of services to its small business customers, the web hosting and domain name registration company said Wednesday.
The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
With over 200,000 customers that are mainly small businesses and entrepreneurs, Outright in Mountain View, California, has offered since 2008 a finance application that automates small-business accounting tasks. The web and mobile application imports data from marketplaces, such as PayPal, eBay, Amazon and Etsy, as well as bank accounts and credit cards, Go Daddy said.
The packaging of web services with applications for customers has proven attractive to a number of companies including business and financial management software vendor Intuit which also offers web services such as domain name registration, web hosting, and website design.
Go Daddy in Scottsdale, Arizona is hoping that Outright’s customers will use its suite of cloud-based services and customer service.
Outright CEO Steven Aldrich said in a blog post that the company’s customers will benefit because of the range of Go Daddy’s products, services, and support designed for small business owners. Aldrich and other Outright colleagues have joined Go Daddy, with Aldrich taking over as Go Daddy’s senior vice president of applications.
“As more and more small businesses turn to eCommerce, Go Daddy and Outright will develop innovative solutions to help them achieve success both in the front and the back office,” Go Daddy CEO Warren Adelman said in a blog post, indicating that the company may be considering more applications.
Go Daddy, which has attracted criticism for its controversial Super Bowl advertisements featuring scantily clad women, has run into criticism on Twitter for the acquisition, with some Outright customers threatening to leave its service. One user for example said he wanted to switch not because of the service but because of Go Daddy’s advertising, though Outright assured him in a message that the company now had a new CEO in Adelman, and a professional advertising firm.