State of the Mittelstand · snapshot · 4 Oct 2026
Metalwork, engineering, construction and service across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Read from websites, registers, job ads and the trade press.
1,496
companies
1,313
checked
415
articles
Customer route · all sectors
2.8 of 6 hurdles
That is how many hurdles a company has on average when a customer wants to get something done via the website. Only what is visible from outside counts. 60 % of companies have three or more, 3 % none.
How many hurdles a company has
Number of hurdles · height: number of companies
n = 1,258 companies examined · fax: denominator is companies with a legal notice
Data sovereignty
99 %
of Swiss companies mail via a US provider. Germany: 70 %.
n = 173 / 755
Succession
32 % of companies with recorded leadership: same person for 15+ years.
Hiring office staff
Office-hiring companies hand over by hand more often: 38 % versus 19 %.
Security
10 of 19 visible Exchange servers no longer get security updates.
Where mail lives · all sectors
Country, mail provider, provider headquarters. Hover a band.
Company size
The middle hands over most by hand: 41 % at 50 to 249 staff, 21 % at 250+.
Too few companies state their size.
Hurdles by sector
Average customer-route hurdles, sectors with 30+ companies.
From dataset to handover
Not every company has a register entry, not every entry names leadership.
Which technology runs · all sectors
Microsoft 365 runs at 46 % of companies, WordPress at 36 %. Click into the circle to open a group.
Detected from website, DNS and certificates. Internal systems without a trace online are invisible to us.
Who they hire · all sectors
1,490
job ads on company websites. 26 % are apprenticeships, 18 % office roles.
Area by number of ads. "current": recently re-confirmed on the website; older ads may be filled.
Trade press · all sectors
51 of 142 articles are about digitalisation. Portal or shop: 7 % of companies.
Classified reports per quarter. More reports also means we read more sources.
What is coming
23
deadlines in the coming years, first e-invoicing from 1 Jan 2027.
What happened when · all sectors
When a company service first appears publicly, and when something changed in the commercial register. The clearest signal: new management clusters in 2019 to 2021, with up to 202 companies a year.
First digital trace · 1,003 companies
Commercial register · 839 companies · as of 2022
* Measurement effects: all certificates must be logged publicly since 2018, hence the 2018 peak. Expired certificates drop out of the log, so for many companies the current year appears as the first trace. Shown is first evidence, not the start. Register: open dataset up to July 2022; the last year is incomplete and early years also reflect the start of recording. Cells under 3 companies stay empty.
Analysis of our researched dataset, not a representative sample. Percentages from 30 companies, no cell below 3, never a company name. Not found does not mean not there.
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