What Deubner Verlag does

Deubner Verlag, legally Deubner Recht & Steuern GmbH & Co. KG, is a German specialist publishing and information services company headquartered in Köln-Rodenkirchen at Oststraße 11. Founded in 1974 and operating with 51-100 employees, it serves lawyers (Rechtsanwälte) and tax consultants (Steuerberater) through two domain-specific online portals, deubner-recht.de for legal practitioners and deubner-steuern.de for tax professionals, complemented by the Deubner Akademie continuing-education seminar platform. The firm is a subsidiary of WEKA Business Information, one of Germany's leading specialist media providers, which supplies group-level scale and resources. The company maintains an active website presence, with sub-brands covering legal practice content, tax practice content, and professional development seminars.

The product portfolio is built on a web-based professional information platform combining online databases, software tools, specialist books, loose-leaf works (with automatic renewal), journals, and CD-ROMs. Notable technical components include the Homepage-Services product, which embeds Deubner content (videos, news, calculators, fact sheets, tools) directly into law firm client websites as an OEM/embedded channel; the Deubner E-Rechnungen electronic invoicing service operating in ZUGFeRD format with optional XML output; and the ESt-Helfer tax preparation tool. Deubner Akademie seminars and webinars are delivered partly through a data-processing partnership with taxflix GmbH, while calculators are provided by Smare/smart-rechner.de and hosted on IONOS infrastructure. Technology stack signals include Google Analytics, Google Ads, Bing Ads, Meta Pixel, LinkedIn Analytics, Mouseflow, Friendly Captcha, and SurveyMonkey as supporting SaaS dependencies.

Deubner earns revenue through three streams: recurring subscriptions for digital databases, online access, and continuous publication delivery (loose-leaf works, journals) with automatic renewal; one-time sales of specialist books, CD-ROMs, and software; and seminar revenue from continuing education delivered via Deubner Akademie. Pricing is not publicly disclosed, with quotes provided upon request. Distribution is direct-to-consumer through website e-commerce, phone sales, email/fax ordering, and the Homepage-Services embed channel. GTM relies on direct sales with no resellers or marketplace intermediaries. The firm markets through its corporate website, LinkedIn, XING, Facebook/Instagram, email newsletters, paid Google/Bing search, and taxflix-mediated webinars as educational marketing. Customers are segmented horizontally between two primary personas (lawyers and tax consultants) and a secondary persona (law firm and tax practice staff), serving practitioners exclusively in Germany with no evidence of global operations.

Name

Deubner Verlag

Legal name

Deubner Recht & Steuern GmbH & Co. KG

Website

https://deubner-verlag.de

Company type

Private

Founded year

1974

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Deubner Verlag is a German specialist publishing and information services company, founded in 1974 and headquartered in Köln, serving lawyers and tax consultants with online legal and tax databases, specialist books, journals, continuing-education seminars, and embeddable content modules.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Specialist Legal and Tax Publishing

NAICS

Book Publishers (51313), Newspaper, Periodical, Book, and Directory Publishers (5131), Software Publishers (513210)

SIC

Books: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2731), Miscellaneous Publishing (2741)

akta.pro primary industry

Legal Reference (Statutes, Case Law, Practice Guides) (EDAGAGAB)

Keywords

• Specialist legal publishing
• Tax advisory information
• Professional databases
• Continuing education seminars
• Fachverlag law tax

Headquarters

HQ city

Cologne

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

Personnel, Operations, Technology or R&D, Marketing or Sales, Supply Chain

Revenue model

1. Subscription Products: Ongoing subscriptions for digital databases, online access, and continuous publication delivery (loose-leaf works, journals) with automatic renewal terms
2. One-time Product Sales: Sale of specialist books, CD-ROMs, and software products for legal and tax professionals
3. Seminar Services: Continuing education seminars for tax consultants and lawyers offered through Deubner Akademie

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels4 records

Marketing channels8 records

Core offering

Deubner Verlag is a specialist publishing house that produces and distributes practice-oriented professional information for lawyers and tax consultants in Germany. Its core offerings include online legal and tax databases, specialist books, loose-leaf works, journals, practice software, client information materials, and continuing education seminars delivered through dedicated portals (deubner-recht.de, deubner-steuern.de, Deubner Akademie) with embedded content modules for law firm websites.

Product overview

Deubner Recht & Steuern operates as a specialist publishing house providing Fachinformationen (professional information) for legal and tax advisory professions. The portfolio consists of multiple interconnected products: deubner-recht.de offers legal databases, expert books, and software for attorneys; deubner-steuern.de provides tax advisors with current information through journals, books, CD-ROMs, and online solutions; Deubner Akademie delivers mandatory continuing education seminars; and Homepage-Services embeds content modules (videos, news, calculators, tools) into client law firm websites. Additional offerings include E-Rechnungen for electronic invoice processing in ZUGFeRD format. The company is part of WEKA Business Information, a leading German specialist media provider.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• deubner-recht.de: Online portal offering practical solutions for legal matters, from employment law to debt enforcement, featuring expert-authored specialist books, legal databases, and software for legal advisory professions.
• deubner-steuern.de
• Deubner Akademie

Products and services

• deubner-recht.de Online portal offering practical legal solutions for attorneys, including expert-authored specialist books, comprehensive legal databases, and software for legal advisory professions. Covers topics from labor law to debt enforcement and targets practicing lawyers in Germany.
• deubner-steuern.de Online portal providing tax advisors with current tax information and practical solutions for daily practice operations. Offers journals, specialist books, CD-ROMs, online solutions, and client information materials for German tax consulting professionals.
• Deubner Akademie Seminar provider offering continuing education courses with current tax and legal topics for tax advisors, attorneys, and their employees, enabling professionals to fulfill mandatory continuing education obligations in Germany.
• Deubner E-Rechnungen Electronic invoice service allowing customers to receive invoices in ZUGFeRD format as standard or optionally in XML data format, supporting paperless invoicing for B2B customers.
• ESt-Helfer Tax preparation tool where clients enter income tax-relevant data into Deubner-provided forms, supporting Einkommensteuer (income tax) preparation workflows.

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration3 records

Feature4 records

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Broad incumbents

• Haufe Group: Haufe is a large German specialist media and software group serving tax, legal, HR and accounting professionals with online databases, software and print. It is a broader incumbent overlapping Deubner in legal/tax content, software and continuing education, but with a wider portfolio across adjacent professions.
• LexisNexis Deutschland: LexisNexis provides legal research databases, practice tools and content for the German legal market, directly competing with Deubner-recht.de on online legal research, though at substantially greater international scale and with broader practice management capabilities.
• Wolters Kluwer Deutschland: Wolters Kluwer is a global legal, tax and regulatory information group with a substantial German footprint (e.g., jurion, Carl Heymanns). It competes broadly with Deubner in legal databases, loose-leaf works and tax software, but at significantly greater scale.
• Deutscher Fachverlag (dfv): dfv is a German specialist B2B media group operating across multiple professional verticals with magazines, digital platforms and events. While its direct legal/tax overlap is partial, it is comparable as a German specialist media operator within shared buyer segments.
• Springer Fachmedien (Springer Professional): Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden publishes professional books, journals and online reference content for German-speaking professionals, including legal and tax titles. It is a broader incumbent with overlapping specialist content but a wider subject portfolio than Deubner.

Direct peers

• DATEV: DATEV is the dominant German IT and information services provider for Steuerberater, combining tax software, practice management and reference content. It competes with Deubner-steuern.de for the same primary persona (tax consultants) and increasingly overlaps in software/database functionality.
• Otto Schmidt Verlag: Otto Schmidt publishes legal and tax reference works, journals and digital products for Rechtsanwälte and Steuerberater in Germany, with comparable loose-leaf, journal and online database offerings to Deubner Recht & Steuern.
• Stollfuß Verlag (Stotax): Stollfuß/Stotax publishes loose-leaf works, journals and digital tax databases for tax advisors and lawyers in Germany, closely overlapping Deubner Steuern & Praxis in both product format and target professional audience.
• C.H. Beck Verlag: C.H. Beck is one of Germany's leading legal and tax publishers, offering loose-leaf works, journals, databases (beck-online), books and software for Rechtsanwälte and Steuerberater — directly comparable to Deubner's core portfolio and customer base.
• NWB Verlag: NWB Verlag specializes in tax and accounting content for Steuerberater and tax professionals in Germany, offering books, online databases (NWB Datenbank), journals and continuing education — a direct content and channel peer to Deubner's tax business.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/deubner_recht

Compliance1 record

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Deubner Verlag