SooToday

What SooToday does

SooToday is a local digital news and media platform serving Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, and the surrounding Northern Ontario region. Founded in 2002 by Dick Peplow and operated as part of the Village Media network of 40+ Ontario local news sites, it delivers hyperlocal coverage of news, sports, entertainment, weather, obituaries, and community events through its website at sootoday.com. The product has expanded well beyond news into an integrated digital media ecosystem comprising a business directory with a sponsored Community Leaders Program, a classifieds marketplace (SooToday Market) for jobs, real estate, vehicles, and general goods, a local deals section (Gold Mine), an events calendar, live public webcams, a weather service sourced from Environment Canada, obituary listings, and the daily "The Local" email newsletter.

The platform's technology stack is conventional web content infrastructure integrated with Village Media's CDN (vmcdn.ca), OpenStreetMap for mapping, Apple Sign In for authentication, and social sharing to Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and email. A companion community platform, SooToday SPACES (soo.spaces.ca), hosts user-generated content across photography, local attractions, arts, pets, hockey, and good news. Editorial extensions include the Closer Look podcast (weekly investigative interviews) and themed community columns. There is no proprietary AI/ML disclosed, no mobile app, and no public API or SDK.

Commercially, SooToday operates a hybrid advertising and freemium model. Business directory profiles are offered free to local businesses, while paid monetization comes from job postings, classifieds, event listings, advertising, and sponsored editorial via the Community Leaders Program. The site addresses two primary customer segments: local residents seeking hyperlocal information and local SMBs seeking visibility, recruitment, and promotion channels. Revenue, funding, headcount detail, and ownership structure are not publicly disclosed; the property operates privately under Village Media.

Name

SooToday

Legal name

SooToday

Website

https://sootoday.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2002

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

SooToday is a hyperlocal digital news and media platform serving Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, operating within the Village Media network. It combines local news, classifieds, business directory, jobs, events, weather, webcams, and a community platform to serve residents and local advertisers.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Local News & Community Marketplace

NAICS

Newspaper Publishers (513110)

SIC

Newspapers: Publishing Or Publishing & Printing (2711)

akta.pro primary industry

News & Content Aggregation Portals (BPAMAAAI)

Keywords

• Local news media
• Digital classifieds marketplace
• Hyperlocal community news
• Business directory listings
• Community events calendar

Headquarters

HQ city

Sault Sainte Marie

HQ country

Canada

HQ region

North America

Markets served

GTM type

B2B and B2C

Offering type

Digital Commerce or Content

Cost components

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

Pricing tiers

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

SooToday operates a hyperlocal digital news and community media platform serving Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, delivering daily local news, sports, entertainment, weather, obituaries, and community event coverage. The platform integrates a classifieds marketplace (jobs, real estate, vehicles, local deals), a comprehensive local business directory, live webcams, a daily email newsletter (The Local), and a community content platform called SooToday SPACES, generating revenue primarily through advertising, sponsored business profiles, job postings, and classifieds from local businesses.

Product overview

SooToday is a local digital news and media platform serving Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, operated as part of the Village Media network. The platform operates as a unified digital media ecosystem combining a core news website delivering local, national, and world news coverage with multiple integrated products and services. The core SooToday.com news platform is supported by complementary offerings including the SooToday Classifieds/Marketplace for jobs, real estate, and local deals; the Business Directory for local commerce discovery; Live Webcams for real-time community viewing; SooToday Weather for local forecasting; an Events Calendar for community activities; the Gold Mine deals section; the SPACES community content platform; and SooToday Cares for charitable initiatives. Editorial content spans topical sections including Spotlight (local business features), Closer Look (investigative podcast), and themed columns. SooToday also operates an email newsletter (The Local) and obituary listings. The platform distributes content across the broader Village Media network of Ontario local news sites.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• SooToday Cares: Community giving and charitable initiatives program
• SooToday Market
• Gold Mine
• SooToday Spaces
• Village Picks

Products and services

• SooToday.com Local News Website Primary local news website serving Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, delivering local news, sports, entertainment, business news, national and world news coverage through a digital platform with category-specific sections. Free for readers; monetized through advertising, sponsored content, and paid marketplace listings.
• SooToday Classifieds / Market Self-serve classifieds marketplace for the Sault Ste. Marie community featuring job postings, real estate listings, vehicle sales, marketplace goods, local deals (Gold Mine promotions), service advertisements, event listings, and announcements. Free and paid listings with self-serve posting.
• SooToday Business Directory Comprehensive local business directory organized by category (autos, beauty, community, financial services, food, health, home, real estate, recreation, shopping, travel) with a Community Leaders Program featuring sponsored business profiles for local Sault Ste. Marie businesses.
• Live Webcams

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed No

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

Recent moves1 record

Expansion highlights4 records

Direct peers

• BarrieToday.com: Another Village Media network property serving Barrie, Ontario. Same template, product mix, and revenue model as SooToday, making it a near-clone peer for benchmarking audience and monetization.
• CollingwoodToday.ca: Village Media network site serving Collingwood, Ontario. Shares the same news-plus-marketplace-plus-community-engagement model and is directly referenced in SooToday's Spotlight content, indicating close operational ties.
• OrilliaMatters.com: Village Media network site covering Orillia and surrounding area. Comparable as a small-market Ontario hyperlocal digital news and marketplace platform operating on identical infrastructure.
• Sudbury.com: Sister site within the Village Media network serving Greater Sudbury, Ontario. Operates the same platform stack (news, classifieds, directory, SPACES) and is the most directly comparable peer given shared parent and identical business model.
• BayToday.ca: Village Media network property serving North Bay, Ontario. Comparable small-city Northern Ontario hyperlocal news and classifieds site operating the same Village Media platform.

Broad incumbents

• CBC News (Local): Canadian public broadcaster's local news vertical for Sault Ste. Marie. Comparable as a source of local news and information for the same audience, though funded publicly and not a commercial advertising competitor.
• Townnews.com (Bluestem/Cision local network): Provides digital publishing platform and shared services to hundreds of community newspapers and local news sites in North America. Comparable as a back-end operator for small-market local digital news, though not a direct consumer-facing peer.
• Patch.com: US-based network of hyperlocal news sites covering thousands of communities. Comparable business model of local news plus classifieds/directory, but operates at vastly larger geographic scale across the US rather than focused Ontario regional play.

Others

• Village Media (parent network): Corporate parent of SooToday operating the network of 40+ Ontario local news sites. Relevant as the operating ecosystem that defines SooToday's tech, sales, and editorial leverage rather than as a competing peer.

Regional players

• SooNews (CTV Northern Ontario): Legacy broadcast/local TV news coverage of Sault Ste. Marie and Northern Ontario through CTV. Comparable as competing local-news source for the same audience, though delivered through broadcast/digital rather than a dedicated hyperlocal site model.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks4 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/sootoday
• Facebookfacebook.com/Sootoday
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/sootoday

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

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 SooToday