A long time ago, around 2011, Bosch Tools launched an online community website, called BeThePro.com.
It seems that Bosch Tools finally shut things down at the end of 2021. BeThePro.com is gone, and now simply redirects to a Bosch page as shown in the above screenshot.
BeThePro had a great deal of community content – a user forum – but they also had front-page news and review content about Bosch products and other topics.
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I have always had mixed feelings about BeThePro-created content, as I felt they never clearly disclosed their affiliation to Bosch Tools.
Here’s the bio that “BeThePro Staff” used when posting articles about Bosch products:
BeThePro.com is a construction industry information source for professionals working in the North American market. It provides access to how-to, best practices and best new materials details from experts in a variety of disciplines. The site is sponsored by leading construction manufacturers
Over the years, from what I saw, BeThePro newsletters and content always referred to Bosch Tools as their “sponsor,” rather than their owner and operator. I always found this to be strange, at the least.
For instance, here’s an entry from the BeThePro FAQ from August 2015, as per the Wayback Machine:
Who owns Be the Pro? – We know it sounds cheesy, but we like to think that all our visitors own BTP. Without each of you visiting the site and reading and posting on the forum, the site wouldn’t exist. This probably didn’t answer your question though. BTP is supported by our sponsors who give their time, products and money to make sure that the site can continue to serve the needs of all construction professionals.
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Why couldn’t or wouldn’t they simply say “Bosch Tools owns BethePro?” This has always been a mystery to me. I guess we’ll never know.
I brought this up with Bosch Tools USA’s Brand Manager at the time, but it was for naught, as Bosch Tools/BeThePro never updated their FAQ or improved their transparency in any visible way. Things remained as they were until the very end.
I suppose it doesn’t matter anymore, now that BeThePro – and all of their staff and user-generated content – is gone.
Well, not completely. BeThePro lives on, via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.
Frank D
It is always a shame when communities get taken down, don’t get the least bit of supervision and understanding of its users, then get switched to some stupid new format or just pulled … or the manufacturer or business goes out of business. Seen it with a good number of sites and communities.
aaron+s
Maybe they are going to replace it with a new ExTrEmE!! version
Tyler
There are very specific reasons why there wasn’t proper transparency and because of non disclosure agreements the information likely isn’t ever to become public. For several years I was one of the paid staff members of that site and one of the original staff when this site launched in 2012. Believe me, I wanted that information public, but my boss, their boss and corporate were vehemently against this. Without naming names as let me be the first to say; I tried reaching out to multiple big names within the industry including several prominent large Youtubers most here would recognize and none of them wanted to cover this at all. I’ve been in this tool industry for a long time so it’s not as if I random person.
Either outright refusal as they didn’t want to “rock the boat” and or they were more concerned about their sponsorship’s. One particular big name individual to their credit told me they’d cover this story despite the potential backlash but backed out the last minute due to industry insiders compelling them not to engage what was described as “whistle blowing”. That was easily the most challenging aspect of all this; the fact that those with large social media following in this industry were more concerned about themselves than transparency and accountability.
Stuart
I finally wrote a strongly-worded letter to the Bosch Tools USA Brand Manager about this in 2015, and he recognized it was improper and promised to have the site and FAQ updated with visible disclosures. Nothing ever came of that.
In private emails as far back as 2012, I expressed concern about potential BeThePro reader confusion due to insufficient transparency.
Included in my email to Bosch’s USA Brand Manager, I wrote that I didn’t want to give their BeThePro property any good exposure, which a post here certainly would have done.
I felt it to be so shady, for Bosch to be featuring reviews and news of their own products on what seemed to have been misrepresented as a “sponsored” and independent “industry information source.”
Joe Sainz was great, and he commented here a lot towards the beginning. I also knew several outside people initially affiliated with BeThePro content.
This bothered me for years, and I was never happy to keep a lid on things.
A lot of tool brands do a lot of shady things, and I have to choose what I blow a whistle on or complain about. Ultimately, I kept this packed in because it was something that didn’t directly affect me, ToolGuyd, or ToolGuyd readers.
I brought it up privately, and the Bosch manager, who was a pleasure to work and communicate with before they sadly left the company, said they would remedy things. For whatever reason, Bosch never did.
The original draft of this post included my email to Bosch and their response from 2015, but it seemed too moot to belabor at this point.
Joe Sainz
Thanks Stuart!
To give a little history here; BTP was more a guerrilla marketing project at Bosch accessories group. Bosch was very much a “silo’ed” (that term was often used) environment, with different marketing teams for Bosch Tools, Bosch accessories, Bosch measuring tools, etc. It wasn’t supported by the other marketing teams. Bosch, being a German company, was very rules and regulations for how things must be done. BTP was a way to avoid some of that. The more it was labeled as Bosch, the more “Bosch-like” it had to be.
The site wasn’t just a Bosch site though, we had other industry sponsors (Blaklader, Quikrete, etc) and I think that was also part of the reason for avoiding Bosch site label.
The original idea of BTP was to foster industry knowledge/communication and get products out to other Pro’s and have them review – break out of the typical spokesperson model (Joe the Pro). I had been out of the trades since mid-2008 (thanks housing market for taking a dump!) and wasn’t an expert in everything, but if I knew a guy…
It was us trying to create a type of “influencer marketing” before we knew what that was or how to do it. We would mix in some marketing with lots of other trade info.
I’ve been away from BTP and Bosch accessories since April 2014, moving to a sales role. I left Bosch a year later and joined Snap-on. Ask me anything I guess!
Steve
Bosch has totally been phoning it in here in North America for years compared to their competitors. I feel it’s ok to buy some one-off corded stuff from Bosch, but I would never invest in one of their battery platforms.
Stuart
No comment.
Rob
It hasn’t shuttered. It’s been renamed “Bosch Pro Insiders” and is more of a private forum afaik. Check your “requests” on your Instagram. They spammed everyone I know, including myself.
OldDominionDIYer
Yeah, not surprised at all. When I did my research before choosing to invest thousands of dollars of my hard-earned cash into a battery platform Bosch was one of my top 4 brands along with Dewalt, Makita and Milwaukee. The more research I did the stranger this company seemed to be, and it was frustrating since they seem so “on top of the game” in other regions (Asia and Europe). So glad I eliminated them. There have been some many more strange (to me) marketing stuff going on since that I have totally disregarded the brand here in the USA.
Ken
I recently tried to access the BeThePro community to get some info on track saw accessory compatibility that is not easy to decipher from official Bosch sources. When I found that they had taken the forum down, I was pretty disappointed. I was already aware that the community was actually a Bosch property. I think of all the hours that dedicated Bosch users contributed to that community – for Bosch to press the delete button on that freely provided labor is a real slap in the face to the users.
Still – and despite Bosch NA’s absolutely awful marketing in recent years – my main platform will remain Bosch for at least a while longer. They make solid tools, but their strongest point IMO is their batteries. They have focussed on releasing a logical lineup (4 / 8 / 12Ah), are reasonably priced (about $10/Ah), and high quality (all 21700 cells). IMO, the same can’t be said for Milwaukee, Makita, and DeWalt. Milwaukee makes high-quality batteries, but their lineup is needlessly complicated and way too expensive. Makita is expensive and surprisingly lagging behind. DeWalt seem to have a logical lineup, but are quite expensive.
One other feather in Bosch’s cap is that they are one of the only mainstream tool brands that make at least some cordless tools outside of China. Several of my recent purchases are made in Germany. Most of the others are Malaysia. Only a minority are made in China.
I hope Bosch NA can get their crap together with marketing and timely releases of their EU tools. I recently read some rumors that heads are going to roll at Bosch NA soon. But I’m not an industry insider so what do I know.
Potato
A Bosch 4 ah battery is 99 bucks at lowes, where is this $10/ah battery pricing?
Ken
You’re right – at retail, bare batteries across all brands are expensive.
The cheapest source for batteries from any brand is when they come in kit form, with a tool. For example, Lowes just had a sale for several 18V tools (multi tool, vacuum, sander) for $79 including a 4.0Ah battery + charger kit.
For bare batteries, look to the secondary market for batteries removed from kits. That means eBay or local marketplaces. I have Bosch 4Ah battery + charger kits listed locally for $40 with very little interest. In contrast, I also have Milwaukee 5Ah batteries (old 18650 cells) listed for sale locally, without a charger, and they easily sell for $70. The prices are about the same on eBay.
If you don’t have a receipt, Bosch warranty applies based on the production date of the battery. With that said, I have 8-year-old Bosch batteries that still work fine. I’ve never had to warranty a Bosch battery.
mark
yep, solid tools, best batteries, but slow to come out with new tools, maybe why their tools are so solid …
Charles Anderson
I liked browsing that community. It felt like a Bosch owner group forum but the user projects there were a good source of ideas.
Some warning would be nice. So I could blow up a few onenote/ Evernote notebooks.
Michael+Hammer
Bosch was pretty innovative once upon a time. I still love my gravity rise table saw. I think they were the first to have up front control of the bevel lock on a miter saw, no more reaching awkwardly around the saw to lock in a bevel without moving it. Still have and love that saw too. I have all four of the top brands 5” RO sander ( call it 5 if you include Festool) and Bosch has outlasted Makita, DeWalt, and Milwaukee with superior dust collection. They took over RotoZip and I own two of those too. Another good innovation of theirs is my 7 1/4” circular saw that came without a cord, just a recess with a male plug and a hook to secure a cord. This allows me to use any extension cord and eliminates that weak connection from saw cord to extension cord. That saw has taken some serious abuse is is still going strong with its magnesium base plate. All of these tools are approaching 20 years old and are still killing it on the job site. I got them all over a short stretch of years at the JLC Live show where they were the biggest, most attractive booth in the convention center. They are hard to find at that show these days. It’s a shame they don’t market like that anymore. Other than Lowe’s I don’t really notice them anywhere. I don’t typically buy my power tools at big box stores. When I go to my local tool store (geared towards trades people) it’s overwhelmingly red and yellow when you walk through the door. I have never heard of Be The Pro, but just the same it’s a shame it’s gone.
mark
for corded tools i always choose bosch first, unless the other guys have done something really smart. no one ever got sacked for buying bosch, and sometimes cheaper too. 10v range has been solid and a bit innovative, but 18v range a bit slow with new gear ….
Kevin+M+Smith
I bought one of the first Lithium-Ion based 10v tool sets back in ’08-ish, the Bosch..
Those tools (Drill, impact driver, circular saw, sawzall, jigsaw) with 2 batteries served my needs for well over a decade until I switched to Dewalt a few years ago. The only reason I switched is because Bosch didn’t really expand the 18v lineup over the years at all. Dewalt had what I needed, so I’ve gone all in on the 20v Dewalt system with about 15 various tools and a half dozen batteries.
Bosch has always been bad at marketing. I never knew the referenced site existed.
The overall quality and construction of the Bosch is a step or 2 above Dewalt, but that doesn’t do any good if they don’t make the tools I need.
Rob
It hasn’t shuttered. It’s been renamed “Bosch Pro Insiders” and is more of a private forum afaik. Check your “requests” on your Instagram. They spammed everyone I know, including myself.
Dustin
Anyone know where the members moved on to? I see most of the names from there haven’t popped back over on CT.