uKit Group

Developer company of solutions for independent creation and development of websites and online stores, one of the oldest players in the SaaS designers market in Russia and the CIS.

Assets

For June, 2017 services are a part of uKit Group:

• uKit,
• uCoz,
• "People" and others.

The products uKit Group work on model frimium ("shareware"), are translated into the main world languages and are used in more than 100 countries. By this time on their bases over 25 million websites are created.

In addition to key products, uKit Group invests in the game industry (Web tycoon, economic online strategy about development of the Internet) and the internal startups creating an ecosystem for development of the websites on any platforms: the designer of social widgets for the websites uSocial, the designer of calculators and the uCalc forms, freelance the uPartner exchange and others.

Development and product management is conducted in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don. In staff of the company more than 170 people work.

History

2017

Renaming into uKit Group

In the spring of 2017 the company was renamed into uKit Group. The legal entity was kept by the former name "Yukoz Media".

1 million websites on the uKit platform

By 2017 the number of users of uKit exceeded 1 million. According to the company, the project is the most fast-growing in the Russian market.

2016: Start of the designer of the websites for small business of uKit

In 2014 in uKit Group development of the certain ordinary designer of the websites for small and microbusiness - uKit started. Public beta testing of service was started in 2015, and since 2016 it earned in stable release. In addition to b2c-audience, the product extends also in the b2b-sphere of software development of the white label model.

In 2016 based on uKit there is a solution for creation of the website on the basis of content from the page of business on Facebook (uKit Alt), and the company begins to prepare solutions for import of materials from other platforms, including using technologies of neural networks and machine learning in the course of import. So there is a new service - uKit AI.

2014: Mail.Ru Group sold the share to Compubyte Limited

uCoz is the Russian free management system for the website. Mail.Ru Group owned a share block of service since 2007. Compubyte Limited acted as the buyer. Transaction amount is not disclosed. Earlier Mail.Ru Group already declared an exit from investments which do not correspond to the strategy of Communitainment (communications + entertainment) within which the company is focused on development of communication and entertaining Internet services.

2013: Receiving from Yandex of the People service

At the end of March, 2013 all websites which are stored on a free hosting " Yandex.people " moved under management of uCoz service. Representatives of both companies promise users the most painless transition to the new platform, but the most devoted fans of People already lifted a hysterics. However, even if everything will pass smoothly, obviously that there came the decline of the most popular designer of the websites in Runet.

"People" as old residents of "Yandex" remember, were created for few months and were started on February 4, 2000 with the slogan "Construct the Website in 60 Seconds". For the first two months using service nearly 30 thousand websites were created. At the same time the whole years, according to a slogan, main "populists" remained beginning users who wanted to make the website as soon as possible and with the smallest labor costs.

For simplicity and free of charge it was necessary to be reconciled also with extremely poor functionality (however, at the beginning of zero it was not so noticeable), and with a low speed of work of the website, and with need to suffer the advertizing block of "Yandex" in a page corner. However, during creation of a personal page or website of school in the town these shortcomings were absolutely noncritical: there were quite enough built-in opportunities for creation couple of pages with the story about themselves, a photo gallery and the guest book.

Also existence of taste or some basic ideas of the good and evil was not obligatory for creation of the website. Very quickly (and, it seems, forever) People began to be associated in Runet with vyrviglazny backgrounds and fonts (whether the text on the page is read, concerns site builders not always), animation, dangerous to the epileptic, and indispensable creeping line. As a result, even despite ease of creation of the websites to give the reference in the domain .narod.ru in decent societies began to hesitate.

Nevertheless service for many years remained one of the main free hostings of Runet. Not least it was promoted by popularity of "Yandex": yandex.ru was entered and many Russians only just connected to Network continue to enter in the browser. As a result and to create the page — if like that was required — "beginners" preferred in already familiar place.

"Yandex", obviously, lost interest in the child quickly enough. The only serious updating of People happened in the summer of 2009: then there was more convenient designer of the websites and an opportunity to transfer the resource to the normal domain of the second level (i.e. on site.ru instead of shameful site1987.narod.ru). More service was not touched, but managed to create the file hosting service with the same name.

And here, in five days prior to the 13 anniversary of a hosting of the websites "Yandex" announced that will transfer a product to uCoz service. The last, in fact, is same People, is only the main source of income for the company. From here, on the one hand, much more wide functionality and a set of the templates offered users, and with another — more tough monetization: you or agree to show advertizing on the pages, or pay for its shutdown. At the same time already now uCoz if to judge by Alexa, is more popular than People.

In "Yandex" disposal from outdated and irrelevant, but still popular (according to TNS, for December the sites on People were visited by more than 21 million people) service was decided to be smoothed as much as possible. The matter is that together with the user pages of uCoz will receive also the domain .narod.ru. Therefore, the addresses of the websites will remain the same. At the same time under the authority of "Yandex" will remain as the files uploaded on the file hosting service People, and the @narod.ru mail. As two companies will untangle this ball, apparently, even they do not know yet.

For the "populists" who moved to uCoz several indulgences will work. It will be possible to enter a control panel in a new system using the account from "Yandex", and "the advertizing quarantine" (term is not set yet), during which on pages there will be no advertizing will act on the websites. Seldom visited resources will be left without advertizing and further and consequently, will not impose a payment for shutdown of banners to them.

To smooth even more a negative concerning failure from a web hosting, "Yandex" in every possible way emphasized that there were also more sad examples. So, similar products managed to close both Mail.Ru, and Yahoo, and even Microsoft in due time (the last, however, agreed about transfer of the websites on the WordPress platform). Nevertheless crowds of dissatisfied site builders occupied comments in the corporate blog of "Yandex" and on alternative platforms, accusing the company of treachery and seeing a terrible plot in its actions.

Of course, it is unlikely behind the solution to give People in a charge creators of uCoz are stood by more terrible plot, than desire, clear in terms of business, to get rid of the dying product. But, most likely, in March, 2013 history of a 13-year web hosting will end. "People" in "Yandex" will not be any more — the company got rid of the file hosting service of the same name in the middle of January, 2013.

For 2013 in the uCoz system there are more than 1.2 million active websites in 16 language localizations. The general traffic of a system - more than 150 million demonstrations a day.

2010: 1 million websites on the uCoz platform

In 2010 the quantity of the active websites on the uCoz platform exceeded 1 million.

2007: Investments from DST fund of Yury Milner

In 2007 the company of a privlkl of investment from DST fund (Digital Sky Technologies) of Yury Milner.

2005: Start of uCoz service

The uCoz web service started at the end of 2005 by a small command became the first product of the company. For the first year the project brought together 100 thousand active users and made profit.

Awards

In 2008 uCoz got the award "Gold Website" in the "Online Stores, Services, Electronic Business" nomination, in 2009 - Runet Prize in the Technologies and Innovations nominations and the award Open Web Awards in the Best Site for Publishers nomination.