Sunbelt Completes Kerio Firewall Buy

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.

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