What is Alistar specialised in?

Website development, CRM & lifecycle strategy, Marketing automation, Dashboards & reporting, Data science & analytics (incl. predictive modelling), E-commerce.

Around 138 full-time equivalents (financial year 2025).

Which sectors does Alistar work for?

Construction & real estate, Energy & environment, Industry & manufacturing, Retail & e-commerce, Food & beverage.

Review: Alistar: E-business en e-commerce (vroeger ESC)

Q: Who are the clients of Alistar?

Among others Buildmat-group (Deschacht), Grandeco Group, ATS Groep, Spuntini, Floréac, pgb-Europe, Gymfed.

Alistar: E-business en e-commerce (vroeger ESC)

Vanuit Gent werkt ESC sinds 2000 als digitaal bureau (web & platform). De bezetting ligt rond 138 VTE. Het bureau combineert data & analytics, crm & marketing automation en webdevelopment. De klanten komen vooral uit retail, groothandel/distributie, energie en maakindustrie. Uit de publiek bekende klantenlijst: Decran, FincoEnergies, Wijnhuis Bollaert en Benegas.

Blending Business & IT
Alistar is een grotere IT, infrastructuur en technologie leverancier. Het is een belangrijke partner van Microsoft binnen o.a. het Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform (Customer Engagement & Business Central). Binnen Alistar werkt een afdeling E-business Solutions met een 30-tal mensen.
Voor grotere KMO’s blenden ze business en IT. Ze verzorgen complexere webshops en klantenportalen, met maatwerk of bestaande frameworks.
De E-business afdeling van Alistar werkt met een 30-tal VTE, waaronder:

15 full stack developers
5 data engineers
een PM team dat ook de functionele analyse en UX/UI verzorgt

Wat ze niet doen: marketing, branding, retail
Zelf omschrijven ze hun cultuur als: ondernemend, customer intimate, down to earth, succes samen vieren

Referentieklanten: Buildmat-group (Deschacht), Grandeco Group, ATS Groep, Spuntini, Floréac, pgb-Europe, Gymfed
Gepercipieerde concurrenten: Delaware, Studio Emma, The Reference
Tech stack: .net, Nuxt, Vue.js, Sana Commerce, Propeller, Natch OS, Shopify
Ondernemingsnummer: 0469.649.056
Gemiddelde klantgrootte: 100k

Who do they see as competitors?

Studio Emma The Reference

As indicated by the agency itself.

1

How this agency makes money

Revenue, margin and what an hour of work brings in. Everything on the earning side sits together here.

Revenue trendgross margin per financial year

20222023202420242025

Latest year: € 12,71 mln gross margin, growth +36,6% against a sector median of +3,1%.

At or above sector pace

MarginEBITDA / gross margin · value-added coverage

20222023202420242025

ESCSector median

EBITDA margin 36,2%, sector median 22,6%. Value-added coverage 1,37 (median 1,23).

Healthy margin

Revenue per headGross margin per FTE, against payroll cost

€ 92.253

Median (2025) € 77.398

Against a payroll cost of € 89.486 per FTE. The ratio between the two is the coverage rate above.

Above the median

Yield levelYield per hour worked, against payroll cost

€ 55

Median (2025) € 48

229.299 hours worked, 1.664 per FTE. Against that sits € 54 of payroll cost per hour worked, leaving € 2 for premises, equipment, depreciation and profit.

Above the median

No hourly rate follows from this. Gross margin is already net of services and sundry goods, which mixes rebilled production with the agency's own overhead, and the accounts do not say how many hours were billable. Deriving a rate from this systematically understates it.

2

Can the agency take a hit

Buffer, cash position and payment behaviour side by side, so you can see where they disagree.

Bufferequity in months of payroll

Buffer: 3,7 months (median 5,3 mo). Equity in the latest year: € 3,84 mln.

Adequate buffer

Cash positionAvailable cash, and whether it covers short-term debt

Cash € 1,02 mln. Liquidity ratio 0,78: current assets cover short-term debt not in full. Solvency 6,8%.

Not covered

Payment behaviourTowards suppliers and towards the NBB

Trade payables correspond to 46 days of supplier credit, sector median 46. The accounts were filed 272 days after closing; the legal deadline is seven months.

Filed late

3

Signals and strengths

Events from the CBE and the Official Gazette over the past 24 months, plus positive markers derived from the figures.

Continuity

Points to ask about

Signals in the last 24 months

Zichtbaarheid verschoven · 1 Nov 2026 · Google Autocomplete
Late filing · 29 Sep 2026 · NBB
The annual accounts were filed after the statutory deadline. Over a third of the sector does this, usually because of the accountant's calendar. Rarely a story in itself.
Board change · 6 Jan 2026 · Staatsblad
Appointments or resignations on the board. Routine during growth, succession or a new partner. Ask about it when several changes follow each other closely.
Loss-making year · 31 Dec 2024 · NBB
One financial year closed at a loss. The size is not shown here: it can be a few thousand euros, a one-off settlement, or a deliberate investment. Ask the agency what was behind it.

Click a signal for a plain-language explanation. Each signal is a fact from a public source, without the agency's own context. Best to ask them directly.

What this agency does well

EBITDA margin above the sector median (36,2%)
Stable team (no meaningful FTE loss)
Value-added per euro of payroll above the sector median (1,37)
Equity was earned, not injected (reserves 95,1× the capital contributed)
Turnover below the median (14,5%)

Each point is a fact from the filed annual accounts, measured against the same thresholds and sector medians as the signals above.

4

All the figures

Reference material, not a starting point. Expand it if you want to read the series yourself.

5 financial years, 2022 to 2025Result, staff and balance sheet

	2022	2023	2024	2024	2025
Result
Gross margin	€ 12,04 mln	€ 12,81 mln+6,4%	€ 12,23 mln-4,5%	€ 9,31 mln-23,9%	€ 12,71 mln+36,6%
EBITDA	€ 2,40 mln	€ 896.380	€ 2,45 mln	€ 1,68 mln	€ 4,60 mln
EBITDA margin	19,9%	7%	20%	18,1%	36,2%
Staff
FTE	128,8	138,1+7,2%	136,5-1,2%	138,3	137,8-0,4%
Gross margin per FTE	€ 93.466	€ 92.766	€ 89.619	€ 67.307	€ 92.253
Payroll cost per FTE	€ 74.787	€ 75.896	€ 82.353	€ 64.682	€ 89.486
Balance sheet
Equity	€ 4,59 mln	€ 2,10 mln	€ 2,75 mln	€ 2,03 mln	€ 3,84 mln
Cash	€ 1,81 mln	€ 896.207	€ 1,93 mln	€ 1,96 mln	€ 1,02 mln
Liquidity ratio	1,98	1,51	1,83	0,78	0,78

Payroll cost per FTE comes from the social report where available, otherwise from the Remuneration line. Both are gross costs including employer contributions.

What this factsheet does not know

How good the work is. Figures do not measure creativity, strategy or chemistry.
How the client portfolio is spread. Concentration is not in the accounts.
Freelancers and subcontractors are not in the FTE figures. An agency with 40 staff may in practice run with 70 people.
The figures cover financial year 2025, filed on 29/09/2026. At a fast-moving agency reality today may differ.

Based on publicly filed annual accounts (NBB) and official records (CBE, Belgian Official Gazette). An indication, not financial advice. Sector medians calculated on 2 Nov 2026. Sector medians based on financial year 2025: the last year for which nearly all accounts have been filed.

What the agency actually does 5 services

Digital Experience & Tech

Website development

CRM, Email & Loyalty

CRM & lifecycle strategy Marketing automation

Data, Measurement & Governance

Dashboards & reporting Data science & analytics (incl. predictive modelling)

Sector focus

Energy & utilitiesRetail & e-commerceB2B services

Publicly known clients

DecranFincoEnergiesWijnhuis BollaertBenegasSpuntiniBokort Trading CompanyWilly Naessens Swimming Poolspgb-EuropeFoylo

Based on IKAg research and public sources. Incomplete or outdated? Let us know.

1

People 6 people mapped

The titles skew top-heavy: lots of seniority, few juniors — you're mostly buying experience. A wide leadership layer: 4 of 6 steer.

BV

Benny Van Hyfte

Country Director for Belgium

DS

Dave Saman

CSIO

JH

Jan Hofman

CEO

PS

Philippe Smet

Director

VV

Vicky Van Den Haute

CFO

VD

Véronique Decoster

Chief HR Officer

Based on public profiles. Something wrong? Let us know.

2

Seniors or juniors?

Payroll cost per FTE is the best public proxy for a team's experience level. Higher is not automatically better, but it says something about who sits at the table.

Payroll cost per FTE

€ 89.486

+41% versus the median

Team composition

137,8 FTE

25% women
75% men

€ 89.486

Median Digitaal bureau (web & platform) (2025) € 63.343All agencies (2025) € 62.294

Read with care. Directors and partners invoicing through a management company are not in the payroll cost. At small agencies this skews the picture downwards considerably.

3

Will your team stay?

Inflow and outflow from the social report. This series only counts people on the payroll: freelancers who invoice do not appear in it. A low figure therefore means two very different things, a stable permanent team or a small core with heavy outsourcing. A high figure usually points to short contracts. Compare only within the same type of agency.

Exits 2025

14,5%

Median for this type of agency (2025): 27,9%

Inflow 2025

12,9%

17,8 FTE in, 20,0 FTE out

Net team change

-2,2 FTE

20222023202420242025

Source: annual accounts and social reports (NBB), collected by IKAg. Financial year 2025. Calculations by IKAg; an indication, not financial advice. Sector medians based on financial year 2025: the last year for which nearly all accounts have been filed.