The resurrection of Softonic, the legendary software download website
The company fell into disgrace in 2014, but has managed to reinvent itself and is once again among the most recognized in the market.
BarcelonaThe reader will probably be familiar with the name Softonic, a software and program download website that became very popular in the late 90s and early 2000s. At that time, at the height of the internet boom in Spain, practically everyone regularly used this website to download editing and music programs. It lasted until 2014, when it died of success. Well, it didn't actually die, but it fell into a coma from which it is now awakening. The idea of an aggregator of program download links on an easy-to-use platform was dead.Companies Enrique Collado, current Vice President of New Business Marketing for the company.
"During the first decade of the 2000s, Softonic achieved impressive fame, with exponential growth in volume, downloads and also in brand positioning: it consolidated itself as a reference in Spain and particularly in Catalonia, and as an example of start-up local technology in Barcelona," explains Collado. But it also triumphed in Europe and the Asian market: it positioned itself in the Italian, German, Chinese, and English-speaking markets, and the company changed its name and began to be called Softonic (until then it had been called Shareware Intercom). The success was such that the 20 for 82.5 million euros.
However, the problems had already begun. The decline began: shortly after, the company lost the Google contract and also its positioning in the search engine. "Several things happened at once," explains the vice president of marketing. traffic in a single day.
Furthermore, Softonic's business model is based on advertising. "We depend on Google, and Google makes continuous changes to its algorithm, and at that time things went very badly for us," explains Collado. All of this led to the company applying a redundancy plan (ERE) in 2014 for almost 50% of the template, which caused a great media and industry uproar.
From that moment on, the company knew it was a matter of reinventing itself or dying. A new CEO joined the company for the period 2015-2020, a period during which Softonic achieved "stability." New shareholders also came on board, including two investors with strong connections to the global technology sector: Michael Levit, founder of Adtech, and the German company Eyeo. In 2022, the CEO changed again, and Fiona Garvey took over, at which point a general relaunch took place: the team, objectives, and outlook.
"The goal is to have a more long-term vision, more growth, but also more diversification," Collado explains. "Now the user experience is much cleaner, although the business model is still based on advertising. And there is a much more extensive catalog." The numbers speak for themselves: in 2021, Softonic had 250,000 titles, and more than 50% of traffic came from computers; now, in 2025, it already has 1.2 million titles available, and 70% of traffic comes from mobile devices, and they are already publishing in 18 languages.
"We have also diversified our audience and their needs: on the one hand, we have expanded our catalog for mobile devices, which is what the market demands; on the other, we are entering the B2B market for companies," explains Collado. Along these lines, in 2024, they acquired the French company Appvizer to enter this business segment, while also developing their own B2B strategy within Softonic. Softonic's revival is in full swing, and in fact, in 2024 it closed with a turnover of €28.4 million—the highest in the last decade and almost double that of 2020, when it was around €15 million—and already has around 110 employees, most of them selling to Appvizer, in Montpellier.
How can it avoid another defeat like the one in 2014? "Now we still depend on Google, but less so, although most of our traffic still comes from there. Likewise, Google is the largest automated advertising network, and for us it remains a very important gateway," says Collado. However, it isn't suffering: "The world has changed a lot since 2014, and now we pay close attention to market needs and quality, and in the end, that's what makes up for it: we provide more value to the user, regardless of the changes Google makes."
