Frisian software company AppMachine is selling 40% of its shares for €14m to the American Nasdaq-listed company Endurance International Group.

The sale values AppMachine at €35m, the Financieele Dagblad reports.

The Frisian company, founded in 2013, makes software that allows small and medium-sized firms to build their own apps, dispensing with an expensive programmer. The cheapest version costs €340 a year, AppMachine says.

Endurance is a webhosting and domain registration company with 3.8 million small and medium-sized companies around the world as client. The company offers its clients the opportunity to build their own website, but does so via software such as WordPress for which a programmer is still necessary. This makes AppMachine interesting to them, the FD said.

The American company is interesting for the Frisian company because it has a bigger market. ‘They attract 5,000 new clients every day,’ according to AppMachine founder Siebrand Dijkstra.

‘Endurance may well take over AppMachine in four years’ time,’ Dijkstra told the FD. ‘But we will always be Frisian.’