Fasthosts

Last updated

Fasthosts
Company type Private limited company
Industry Internet services
Founded1999
FounderAndrew Michael
Headquarters
Gloucester
,
England
Parent United Internet
Website https://www.fasthosts.co.uk

Fasthosts Internet Ltd is a provider of Internet access and hosting services based in Gloucester, England. The company also operates the domain name registration service UKreg.

Fasthosts was originally started by Andrew Michael, then aged 17, as part of an A-level school project. [1] It became a limited company in 1999, and launched UKreg in 2000. [2] The company specialised in providing services for small businesses, [3] and in 2002 was listed as the second fastest growing technology company in the United Kingdom by The Sunday Times . In 2005 the company had a turnover of £20 million and made £5 million profit. [4] The company also became known for hosting lavish staff Christmas parties; an event in 2005 costing £600,000 featured appearances from Jonathan Ross, The Darkness and Boney M. [5]

In 2006 Fasthosts was sold to German Internet service provider United Internet for £61.5 million, netting Michael £46 million for his 75% stake. [1] Michael remained as CEO until 2009, [6] when he left to found Livedrive. [7]

In September 2007, shortly after Alisher Usmanov's investment in Arsenal Football Club, Craig Murray blogged about the character of Usmanov, a Russian multi-billionaire Forbes magazine had identified as the 142nd wealthiest person in the world. [8] He said he named Usmanov, alleging corruption, in two of his "quite highly classified" telegrams to the Foreign Office London in 2002 and 2004 written while Murray was ambassador in Uzbekistan. [9] Usmanov's solicitors, Schillings, requested that Fasthosts delete the material. As a result, the server that hosted Murray's blog was permanently closed by the hosting company on 20 September 2007, an action which resulted in unintended deletion of other sites, including a blog by Boris Johnson. [10] [11]

A hacking incident in 2007 prompted Fasthosts to temporarily shut down customers' websites. The company noticed that its servers had been accessed in October and wrote to customers recommending that they change their passwords; in December after noticing "unusual activity" on some sites it closed down those that had yet to change their passwords until new passwords could be issued by post. [12]

In 2008 Fasthosts acquired reseller Streamline.net, [13] and also launched a reseller hosting service in the United States. [14] Cloud infrastructure service Rise was launched in 2010. [15] Fasthosts was the sponsor of The Great Exhibition 2012. [16] In October 2014 Rise was quietly divested to Outsourcery for an undisclosed sum [17] As of 2017, Fasthosts has approximately 415,000 customer contracts spread over a variety of products from domain registrations to email, web hosting and server products. [18]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Web hosting service</span> Service for hosting websites

A web hosting service is a type of Internet hosting service that hosts websites for clients, i.e. it offers the facilities required for them to create and maintain a site and makes it accessible on the World Wide Web. Companies providing web hosting services are sometimes called web hosts.

Tucows Inc. is an American-Canadian publicly traded Internet services and telecommunications company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and incorporated in Pennsylvania, United States. The company is composed of three independent businesses: Tucows Domains, Ting Internet, and Wavelo.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Akamai Technologies</span> American computer networking company

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is an American delivery company that provides content delivery network (CDN), cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, and cloud services. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, it operates a worldwide network of servers whose capacity it rents to customers running websites and other web services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Network Solutions</span> American-based technology company

Network Solutions, LLC, formerly Web.com is an American-based technology company and a subsidiary of Web.com, the 4th largest .com domain name registrar with over 6.7 million registrations as of August 2018. In addition to being a domain name registrar, Network Solutions provides web services such as web hosting, website design and online marketing, including search engine optimization and pay per click management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Reseller</span> Company or individual that buys goods or services for resale

A reseller is a company or individual (merchant) that purchases goods or services with the intention of selling them rather than consuming or using them. Individual resellers are often referred to as middle men. This is usually done for profit. One example can be found in the industry of telecommunications, where companies buy excess amounts of transmission capacity or call time from other carriers and resell it to smaller carriers. Resale can be seen in everyday life from yard sales to selling used cars.

Enom, Inc. is a domain name registrar and Web hosting company that also offers other products closely tied to domain names, such as SSL certificates, email services, and website building software. As of May 2016, it manages over 15 million domains.

Namesco Ltd (names.co.uk) provides professional online services for individuals and businesses including domain name registration, web hosting, website building tools, email services, ecommerce solutions and a range of managed and unmanaged servers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Be Un Limited</span> Internet service provider in the UK

Be Unlimited was an Internet service provider in the United Kingdom between 2004 and 2014. Initially founded as an independent company by Boris Ivanovic and Dana Tobak in 2005, it was bought by Spanish group Telefónica Europe in 2006 before being sold on to BSkyB in March 2013 in an agreement which saw BSkyB buy the fixed telephone line and broadband business of Telefónica Europe which at the time traded under the O2 and BE brands. The deal saw BSkyB agree to pay £180 million initially, followed by a further £20 million after all customers had been transferred to Sky's existing business. The sale was subject to regulatory approval in April 2013, and was subsequently approved by the Office of Fair Trading on 16 May 2013.

Xtra was a brand used by New Zealand telecommunications provider Spark for its Internet service provider subsidiary from 1996 to 2008. At its inception, Xtra provided only dial-up Internet access, but began providing ADSL service in 1999.

TalkTalk Telecom Group Limited is a British telecommunications company that provides pay television and Internet access services to businesses and consumers in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 2003 as a subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse and was demerged as a standalone company in March 2010. Its headquarters are in Salford.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Internet</span> German internet services company

United Internet AG is a global Internet services company headquartered in Montabaur, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The company is structured in two business areas, Access and Applications, and has a total of 16 brands and numerous subsidiaries. The well-known brands under the umbrella of United Internet AG include 1&1, IONOS, Fasthosts, GMX, WEB.DE and 1&1 Versatel.

EarthLink is an American Internet service provider.

ElasticHosts was a computer service provider based in London, England. It was founded in March 2008, and closed on 30 June 2020. It provided a cloud computing service, which used ten data centres; in the United Kingdom, Netherlands, United States, Canada, Hong Kong and Australia.

Linode, LLC was an American cloud hosting provider that focused on providing Linux-based virtual machines, cloud infrastructure, and managed services.

HostGator is a Houston-based provider of shared, reseller, virtual private server, and dedicated web hosting with an additional presence in Austin, Texas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OVHcloud</span> French web hosting and cloud computing company

OVH, legally OVH Groupe SA, is a French cloud computing company which offers VPS, dedicated servers and other web services. As of 2016 OVH owned the world's largest data center in surface area. As of 2019, it was the largest hosting provider in Europe, and the third largest in the world based on physical servers. According to W3Techs, OVH has 3.4% of website data center market share in 2024. The company was founded in 1999 by the Klaba family and is headquartered in Roubaix, France. In 2019 OVH adopted OVHcloud as its public brand name.

sipservice

SIPSERVICE was a Voice over IP (VoIP) service provider based in Switzerland that also operated in Germany and Russia.

Outsourcery Plc, was a UK-based cloud services provider founded in 2007 by co-CEOs, Piers Linney and Simon Newton. They provided services primarily to small-and-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The company went into administration in June 2016 when most of the business and assets were acquired by GCI Network Solutions Ltd.

THG Ingenuity Cloud Services, formerly UK2 Group, is a global provider of internet services. It forms part of THG Ingenuity, an e-commerce services platform. Its services include web hosting, virtual private servers, domain name registration, management, dedicated servers and a content delivery network.

iomart Group plc is a Scottish information technology and cloud computing company which provides managed services from data centres and offices across the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1998 by entrepreneur Angus MacSween.

References

  1. 1 2 English, Simon (11 May 2006). "Internet entrepreneur celebrates £61m deal". The Independent . Archived from the original on 9 January 2015. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  2. ↑ "Our history so far". Fasthosts. Archived from the original on 18 October 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  3. ↑ Pritchard, Stephen (31 October 2004). "Tools Of The Trade: Fasthosts LiveMail Pro email system". The Independent . Archived from the original on 16 June 2011. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  4. ↑ "Young entrepreneur pockets £61.5m". BBC News Online . 12 May 2006. Archived from the original on 14 February 2009. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  5. ↑ Milmo, Cahal (20 December 2005). "Ross and The Darkness star at £600,000 office party". The Independent . Archived from the original on 28 November 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  6. ↑ "Fasthosts Internet Ltd. Company Profile". Yahoo! Finance . Archived from the original on 22 June 2011. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  7. ↑ "Internet whizz Andrew is at it again". This is Gloucestershire. 5 May 2009. Archived from the original on 30 October 2010. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  8. ↑ Weiss, Michael (10 October 2007). "Civil Disobedience on the Web". Slate. Archived from the original on 8 April 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  9. ↑ Conn, David (31 October 2007). "Government denies access to Usmanov reports". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 9 April 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  10. ↑ Kennedy, Dominic (22 September 2007). "Boris Johnson becomes a victim of crossfire in internet war" . The Times. Archived from the original on 9 April 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  11. ↑ Tryhorn, Chris (21 September 2007). "Boris website down after legal row". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 8 April 2018. Retrieved 8 April 2018.
  12. ↑ de Bruxelles, Simon (6 December 2007). "Hackers force mass website closures". Times Online . Archived from the original on 28 December 2021. Retrieved 16 October 2010.
  13. ↑ "Dollamore Ltd". Businessweek . Archived from the original on 29 October 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  14. ↑ Goldman, Alex (21 October 2008). "The Sequel to the Most Aggressive Webhost". ISP-Planet. Archived from the original on 14 October 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  15. ↑ Scroxton, Alex (30 March 2010). "Hosted clouds Rise for FastHosts". MicroScope.co.uk. Archived from the original on 28 November 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  16. ↑ "Our Founder Sponsor". The Great Exhibition 2012. Archived from the original on 26 July 2010. Retrieved 15 October 2010.
  17. ↑ "Rise is now part of the Outsourcery family". www.outsourcery.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014. Retrieved 28 December 2021.
  18. ↑ "FastHosts – A Leading UK Provider Targeting IT Professionals". HostAdvice. 18 July 2017. Archived from the original on 9 August 2017. Retrieved 9 August 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.