RSSSunbelt Completes Kerio Firewall Buy
By Nate Mook | Published December 20, 2005, 3:58 PM
Sunbelt Software on Tuesday completed its acquisition of Kerio's desktop and server firewall products, a move which will save the popular free Kerio Personal Firewall from its planned retirement. In addition, Sunbelt is lowering the price of the full version to $19.95.
As previously reported, Kerio says it is moving out of the desktop market and focusing on software for small businesses. The company currently offers Kerio MailServer and Kerio WinRoute Firewall in that space.
For the time being, the acquired products will be branded "Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall" and "Sunbelt Kerio ServerFirewall." In order to bring on new customers, Sunbelt is offering a 25 percent discount on the Personal Firewall through March 2006.
The effective price for the software becomes $14.95, and is good for users renewing their license as well.
"We've had this idea for years of what we call 'No Brainer' pricing. The idea is that it's such a value that it makes the whole purchasing decision easy. Plus, I do feel that most software is overpriced anyway," wrote Sunbelt President Alex Eckelberry on the Sunbelt Blog.
"Well, $19.95 is no-brainer pricing. It's the cost of a decent meal. So we have priced the Kerio Personal Firewall at Sunbelt's No Brainer pricing of $19.95. With that, you get one year of free support, upgrades and updates. Subsequent annual subscriptions are currently $10. It's a ridiculously good deal."
Sunbelt has not yet determined pricing for Kerio ServerFirewall, which was discontinued by the company after version 1.0. Eckelberry says Sunbelt is currently working to complete version 2.0 of the software so it's ready to ship in the first quarter of next year.
"We're still trying to figure out a good price for this thing, but I can assure you, it will be less expensive than the version Kerio had sold," Eckelberry says.
"We're proud of this acquisition, but we're also humbled by our responsibilities to such a large, active and loyal user base. We are committed to supporting Kerio users and you can always contact me personally if you ever have any issues," he added.
wow, it is great news, as an user of kerio products since year 2001, the acquisition is an wonderful move and combination.
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Kerio is probably the best Firewall I ever had. If I didn't switch over to test Windows Onecare, i'd still be using it.
But the whole application behavior blocking tool can get pretty annoying with its tedious surge of popups whenever installing or modifying a program. Then again, you never know when a trojan is going to launch a browser window and that particular feature will prove highly useful.
Now with Sygate gone, you have two main choices and that's Kerio and ZoneAlarm. Both are a bit resource intensive, but ZoneAlarm has had compatibility problems with security programs like Avast.
Lets hope Sunbelt can turn this friendly old beast into something agile and robust.
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Sunbelt Software is up to its eyebrows in Scientology. I wouldn't buy or use that...
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That's a pretty flameworthy comment to make, Markus10018. Do you have any proof to back up those claims or are you just trolling?
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I've had email correspondence with Alex Eckelberry regarding Sunbelt's Counterspy program. The man is all class! If I wasn't so enamoured with Outpost firewall, I would purchase and use Sunbelt Kerio at the drop of a hat. I used Kerio fw a few years ago and found it to be one of the best. Now that Sunbelt has acquired it, the support should be first-rate.
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Awesome. Wasn't gunna buy it at $40US... content with the free one. But as Kramy said, for $15 you can't go wrong, and it's a great program to support.
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On a totally unrelated Antivirus note....anyone else have it where if they go to www.antivir.com, it brings up avast instead of Antivir? I would have thought they would have bought that name...
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$15?
Wow...I think I might actually get a copy. It's always nice to support good companies, and Kerio blocks so much stuff anyway...
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