CookieFirst Revenue (2024)

CookieFirst generated approximately 885,000 euros in revenue in 2021, up from roughly 300,000 euros in 2020 and approximately 15,000 euros in its partial launch year of 2019. The 2019 figure covered only the final two months of the year following an October 2019 go-live. Year-over-year growth from 2020 to 2021 was approximately 195 percent, and from 2019 to 2020 the company grew roughly 1,900 percent off a small base.

CookieFirst had approximately 35,000 total users as of January 2022, of which roughly 5,000 were paying customers. The remaining users are on a free tier. Tom Van den Bos confirmed the 5,000 paying customer figure during the interview, noting that the number is affected by the company's reseller channel, through which resellers receive a 30 percent discount on standard pricing.

Pricing is structured on a per-domain and per-subdomain monthly basis. The entry-level plan is 9 euros per month per domain, and a second pricing tier is 19 euros per month per domain. Larger clients with multiple domains and high combined traffic volumes can negotiate bulk discounts. The highest-paying customer was paying approximately 1,500 euros per month at the time of the interview. Average revenue per user across the paying customer base was approximately 30 euros per month, which Tom Van den Bos described as roughly equivalent to two to three domains per account.

Resellers, of which there were approximately 350 as of January 2022, receive a 30 percent discount off standard pricing and may charge their own clients an additional implementation or service fee on top of the CookieFirst list price. The largest resellers manage between 80 and 100 client domains each, while smaller resellers may manage as few as three domains for a single customer.

CookieFirst generates revenue through monthly per-domain and per-subdomain subscriptions. The two primary pricing tiers are 9 euros per month and 19 euros per month per domain, with bulk pricing available for clients with large domain portfolios. The company also operates a reseller channel in which agency and service partners receive a 30 percent discount and resell the product to their own clients, potentially adding their own margin or implementation fees on top.

Average revenue per paying customer was approximately 30 euros per month as of January 2022, against a paying customer base of roughly 5,000. The company spent approximately 200,000 euros on marketing in 2021, primarily through LinkedIn advertising and Google Ads, with LinkedIn used both to reach end customers and to recruit resellers. Tom Van den Bos noted that targeting resellers through paid channels is more efficient because a single reseller onboarding can yield multiple end customers with less ongoing support burden.

Profitability was not discussed in the interview. Customer acquisition cost was raised by the host but Tom Van den Bos said he did not have that figure available at the time. Churn, gross margin, LTV, payback period, and burn rate were not discussed.

CookieFirst had a team of nine people as of January 2022. Six of the nine team members are engineers. The remaining roles include online marketing, management, legal oversight, and privacy expertise. Tom Van den Bos noted that the company recently added a privacy expert to handle legal aspects of the product, and that he and his brother Kees are looking to delegate more marketing responsibilities to free up their own time.