About us

Our expertise is making powerful ecommerce easy

As the largest independent provider of online shop software in Europe, ePages specialises in making powerful ecommerce easy for small and medium-sized companies.

Today, 100,000 companies in 70 countries run professional online shops based on ePages cloud-driven software – with up to 15 languages and optimised for mobile devices. Thanks to automatic updates and new integrations, ePages online shops are always up-to-date with the latest ecommerce trends.

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Cloud-driven shop software for SMBs

100,000 shops based on ePages

100+ colleagues across 5 locations

25+ years of experience

Our team

Working across Hamburg, Jena, Barcelona and London, we are an energetic and culturally diverse team of around 100 ecommerce experts. Our common passion for ecommerce and small businesses drives us every day. We know our merchants well, and we continuously enrich and improve our shop platform to address their needs, and deliver a powerful catalyst for their success.

Über und Macbook

Our ecommerce solution

In order to provide entrepreneurs with a powerful and effective ecommerce solution, we integrate more than 80 world class technology partners such as online marketplaces, comparison shopping websites, payment providers and ERP vendors.

Sales of ePages shops via partners

The white label ePages shop solution is available worldwide via sales partners with a variety of plans and pricing. Sales partners are hosting and cloud providers, as well as logistics, telecoms, ERP and yellow pages companies. Powered by ePages, these partners offer best of breed ecommerce solutions to their SMB customers.

Our mission

Simplicity
is beautiful

With ePages, SMBs can build beautiful online shops themselves that enhance all our digital lives.

Small
is powerful

We champion both the importance and success of the millions of SMBs worldwide.

Ship it

Our Software-as-a-Service ensures that ePages shops are always up to date, secure and high performance.

Our journey so far

Unsere Geschichte

blauer Kreis

  • 1983

    Shortly after Apple launched the Lisa Computer in January 1983, the world’s first personal computer with a graphical user interface and a mouse pointing device, the two computer science students Wilfried Beeck and Mathias Dahms founded Beeck & Dahms GbR out of their students flat in Kiel, initially developing software for IBM PCs and Apple II computers. The first application was an inventory management solution, running on Apple II. But with the arrival of the intuitive Lisa interface, the goal was, to develop smart solutions that could potentially be used by everyone without any computer knowledge. However, the price point of 10,000 USD for the Apple Lisa was completely out of reach for the small startup company.

  • 1984

    But on January 24th, 1984, Steve Jobs revealed the Apple Macintosh, a scaled down Lisa, much more affordable at a price point of 2,500 USD. While the market was flooded with cheap PCs, the Mac was initially only gaining traction in a niche market of elite users, but the innovative interface combined with high resolution 3rd party screens created a new market for “Desktop Publishing”.

    1984

  • 1987

    While the first media companies and creative agencies started to use Macs, the company grew and decided to completely focus on Mac development and in August 1987, incorporated as d’ART Computer GmbH, a synonym for “digital ART”.

  • 1988

    In the meantime, Steve Jobs had left Apple and started his new company NeXT, launching the revolutionary NeXT Computer in October 1988. Three months later on a trip to California, Wilfried met Steve Jobs and was invited to the first NeXT developer camp which included the ownership of a NeXT Cube, the most desirable workstation computer for any developer at the time. But when he wanted to take the machine home to Europe, it turned out not to be so easy. Europe was still divided at the time by the Berlin Wall and the iron curtain which was only brought down later that year. Exporting high tech components to Europe was still under restrictions and it was a complex process to receive an import license. After NeXT had gone through the licensing and customs process with d’ART, for the rest of the year all NeXT Computers that went to Europe were imported by the little d’ART Computer GmbH in Kiel and then send off to other developers all around Europe, including one that went to CERN in Switzerland.

    1988

  • 1989

    In November 1989 the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the beginning of a new age for Germany and Europe. Subsequently NeXT worked with d’ART on the official launch of NeXT in Germany and on October 3rd 1990, the date of the German reunification, revealed their second generation of Workstation computers at a special event at the auditorium of the Technical University Berlin.

  • 1990

    A year later, NetConsult GmbH, a sister company of d’ART, was founded in Jena by Wilfried Beeck, Stephan Schambach and Karsten Schneider to distribute NeXT in East Germany. Many universities had received funds to renew their datacenters with modern High-End workstations and NeXT was often the first choice. 

    In the meantime, Tim-Berners Lee had developed the first version of the World-Wide-Web server and browser front end on his NeXT Computer at CERN. It was quickly adopted in the academic community of NeXT users and became one of the unique selling points for NeXT Computers in the academic community.

    But due to disappointing hardware sales in other parts of Europe and the U.S., NeXT decided to discontinue the hardware production to focus on its innovative NeXT OS. Moving out of the hardware distribution, d’ART and NetConsult started to focus on the Apps that they had developed for NeXT. While d’ART continued with the development and distribution of NeXT applications, NetConsult developed a first web browser version of the ERP solution that d’ART had previously developed for NeXT. The initial version only worked with NeXT servers, but when the small startup company received venture capital funding, the money was used to develop a version that worked with Netscape, the company that Marc Andreesen had founded after developing the Mosaic browser that brought the Web to Windows and Mac. The global success of the Netscape browser sparked the foundation of many companies that created web solutions, such as Yahoo and others.

    1990

  • 1995

    In 1995, NetConsult launched the world’s first browser-based ecommerce software package and named it Intershop. A year later, the whole company was renamed Intershop and started a global expansion which subsequently let to one of the most successful European tech IPOs in July 1998, creating a multi-billion-dollar valuation of the company. At the peak in autumn 2000, with revenues of over 150 million dollars, the company was operating 30 offices globally with 1,500 employees. 

  • 2001

    When the tech bubble with inflated valuations burst in early 2001, Intershop was no exception. The company had to streamline its operations. The founders Wilfried Beeck, Stephan Schambach and Karsten Schneider all left Intershop in 2002 and 2003 to re-start e-commerce platforms outside of Intershop. 

    2001

  • 2002

    In July 2002 Wilfried Beeck acquired the rights for the Intershop software that focused on small businesses and put it back into d’ART, renaming the company to ePages, which had been the name of the SMB product at Intershop. ePages started in October 2002 with 5 Intershop developers and quickly grew to a team of more than 100 e-commerce professionals, creating a hugely successful SaaS version of the previous Intershop solution by selling it through hosting providers, such as STRATO, who had millions of customers for their domain-name and hosting business.

    ePages became the synonym for SaaS based online shops in Europe and by the end of the decade had acquired a distribution network across all major European Telcos, such as Deutsche Telecom, British Telecom, France Telecom and Telefonica and some major hosting businesses, such as Host Europe and 123reg in the UK, Acens and Arsys in Spain, Register.it and Aruba in Italy and many others, covering all major markets from Finland down to Portugal and even some markets outside of Europe, such as Australia.

  • 2003

    Technically, ePages was often at the forefront of market developments. In 2003 ePages launched the world’s first direct integration to the eBay marketplace and later also to Amazon, so that ePages merchants could seamlessly sell across many different channels.

    2003

  • 2007

    In 2007, ePages opened an office in Barcelona to support the growing Southern European markets.

  • 2010

    In 2010 ePages partnered with Sage to offer fully synchronized accounting for online stores.

    2010

  • 2014

    In 2014 ePages reached the next milestone by signing a 20 million Euro distribution agreement with 1&1 (later renamed to IONOS), Europe’s largest hosting provider.

  • 2017

    In 2017 ePages launched the new product ePages NOW with a modern look&feel for smartphones and tablets as well as its completely renewed technology platform ePages BEYOND supporting next generation development & integration requirements.

    2017

  • 2020

    In 2020 ePages delivers a whole set of new features to support local businesses during Corona to keep their businesses up and running online. Besides the obvious click&collect features, it makes local businesses more visible with a seamless integration to Google MyBusiness.

  • 2023

    In 2023 ePages launches several breakthrough AI-based features, such as AI-based product descriptions and completely automatic translations to all major languages with a click of a button. Now even the smallest business can set up a website and online shop within a few hours and start selling online all across Europe.

    2023

  • 2024

    Today, after more than 40 years of continuous innovations since its inception as a small student startup in 1983, the company is still driven by the same vision that started it: Using an innovative approach to create better user experiences and human interfaces for the challenges of the digital economy. While the first 20 years were dominated by better user interfaces for desktop devices and networks, the last 20 years have been hugely dominated by mobile devices and platforms, such as social media and marketplaces, creating an always-on experience. With the help of AI, we will surely see the next level of digital and human interaction. Speech and gestures will finally become the most effective interface and AI will help us to make better decisions. At ePages our mission is still to bring those innovations to all the small businesses who want to implement their ideas.

Our history

blauer Kreis
  •  

    2024

    WHMCS offers ePages ecommerce solution

    Heise Group honours ePages for the fourth time as “Professional User Rating” champion

  • 2023

    mediamagneten offers all-in-one solution based on ePages

    Händlerbund and ePages launch partnership

    easypay and ePages launch collaboration to optimise the payment experience for Portuguese businesses

    Sendcloud and ePages announce strategic partnership

    Sage introduces modern commerce solution from ePages

    ePages expands management team with C-level positions in sales, marketing and finance

     

  • 1

     

    2022

    Host Europe offers mobile-friendly solution from ePages

    STRATO launches web shops based on ePages in Sweden

    Mollie and ePages enter strategic partnership

    Stripe becomes pre-installed payment provider on the new developed platform from ePages

  • 1

    2021

    ePages rated best online store solution among 40 platforms

    VR Payment and participating Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken support local retailers with free websites

    Arsys launches mobile-friendly ecommerce solution from ePages

     

    1

  • 1

     

    2020

    ePages initiative “stayopen” supports small physical businesses in times of crisis.

  • 1

    2019

    Elavon and ePages join forces to offer ecommerce solution

    Dominios.pt expands its portfolio with ePages Now shops

    acens launches mobile-friendly ecommerce solution from ePages

    VR Payment launches an all-inclusive solution for brick-and-mortar retailers

     

    1

  • 1

     

    2018

    HostPapa customers gain access to ePages online shops

    XXL Webhosting launches ePages Now ecommerce packages

  • 1

    2017

    HostMySite is the first in North America to launch latest generation ePages Now packages

    ePages and CM4all partner to deliver fully integrated shop functionality within a leading website builder.

     

    1

  • 2

     

    2016

    Fasthosts and ePages partner to offer IT professionals lucrative reseller ecommerce

    ePages partners with Sage to offer fully synchronised accounting for online stores

    ePages delivers ecommerce platform to Fasthosts Internet in the UK

  • 3

    2015

    ePages launches App & Theme Store for online merchants

    Partner portal epages.cloud is launched.

    ePages launched in the U.S. with New York office.

     

    3

  • 4

     

    2014

    ePages hosts its second international Commerce Summit

    120,000 businesses now run their shop with ePages.

    1&1 replaces their legacy store technology with ePages and now offers state-of-the-art online shops in six countries.

  • 5

    2001 – 2013

    In 2013, 80,000 merchants run their shop with ePages. Storefronts are now optimized for mobile devices

    In 2012, the first international Commerce Summit takes place in Hamburg

    In 2010, more than 50,000 businesses are using ePages online shops. ePages for SAP Business One is the first seamless ERP integration

    In 2007, ePages launches in Southern Europe with an office in Barcelona and support for more international regions

    In 2005, ePages launches in the UK with a London office and support for international markets

    In 2003, Strato and ePages partner to launch an affordable do-it-yourself online store for hosting customers. ePages launches the world’s first direct integration with eBay

    In 2002, d’ART Software GmbH acquires all rights of the SMB product line from Intershop and becomes ePages GmbH

     

    5

  • 6

     

    1983 – 2000

    In 1998, Intershop has the most successful IPO of the year in the European tech industry

    In 1997, Intershop launches Intershop ePages, the first ecommerce hosting platform

    In 1996, NetConsult receives Venture Capital and launches globally under the new company name Intershop

    In 1995, NetConsult launches the world’s first browser-based ecommerce software package, called Intershop

    In 1992, the affiliate company NetConsult GmbH is founded by Wilfried Beeck, Stephan Schambach and Karsten Schneider in Jena, as a NeXT distributor for East Germany

    In 1989, d’ART becomes the German distributor for Steve Jobs’ new company NeXT

    In 1987, the company formally incorporates as d’ART Computer GmbH, developing software for Macs

    In 1983, Wilfried Beeck and Matthias Dahms founded the company Beeck & Dahms GbR out of their students flat in Kiel, developing software for Apple computers

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