123 Reg

Last updated

123 Reg
Founded2000
Headquarters Hayes, England, United Kingdom
Managing director Sara Rego
Industry
Employees51–200 (February 2020) [1]
Parent Host Europe Group
URL www.123-reg.co.uk OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

123 Reg is a British domain registrar and web hosting company founded in 2000 and now under the ultimate ownership of GoDaddy. The company claims to be the UK's largest [2] accredited [3] domain registrar and provides Internet services to small- and medium-sized business. From 2003 to 2017, 123 Reg was part of Host Europe Group (HEG). In April 2017, American hosting company GoDaddy acquired HEG for 1.69 billion euros ($1.82 billion). [4]

Contents

History

123 Reg was founded in 2000 [5] [6] by Jonathan and Tim Beresford-Brealey, [7] who prior to this had also set up Webfusion Internet Solutions Ltd in 1997. [8] In 2003, 123 Reg and Webfusion were acquired by Host Europe Group (HEG). [7] In 2004, Host Europe Group was bought by Pipex Communications for £31.2m [9] and 123 Reg became the UK's largest domain registrar, according to the company's parent. [10]

In 2009, Host Europe Group organised its UK operations under the Webfusion Ltd group but kept both brands. [10] [11] The same year, Webfusion became the first UK web host to offer Windows Server 2008 web hosting, [10] and the company opened a £2.5 million data centre in Leeds. [12] Also in 2009, 123 Reg became the first UK domain registrar to have 2 million domain names on register. [10] In 2010, Webfusion Ltd was included on The Sunday Times's list of Britain's fastest-growing private-equity backed companies, the Deloitte Buyout Track 100, and was the only hosting company on the list. [13] In 2012, it became the first UK domain registrar to have 3 million domain names on register. [10]

On 16 April 2016, 123 Reg admitted a major deletion of a large number of virtual private servers (VPSs) caused by an error during what should have been routine maintenance. [14] The event deleted hundreds of websites, with users losing sites and access to data on their VPS service. By 24 April, the situation was still ongoing. During this period, 123 Reg had a further data breach, with customers being able to see the support tickets of other account holders. [15]

In April 2017, American hosting company GoDaddy acquired 123 Reg's parent company, HEG, for 1.69 billion euros ($1.82 billion). [4]

Related Research Articles

In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services and more. As of 2017, 330.6 million domain names had been registered. Domain names are used in various networking contexts and for application-specific naming and addressing purposes. In general, a domain name identifies a network domain or an Internet Protocol (IP) resource, such as a personal computer used to access the Internet, or a server computer.

A domain name registry is a database of all domain names and the associated registrant information in the top level domains of the Domain Name System (DNS) of the Internet that enables third party entities to request administrative control of a domain name. Most registries operate on the top-level and second-level of the DNS.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">.eu</span> Internet country-code top level domain for the European Union

.eu is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for the European Union (EU). Launched on 7 December 2005, the domain is available for any person, company or organization based in the European Union. This was extended to the European Economic Area in 2014, after the regulation was incorporated into the EEA Agreement, and hence is also available for any person, company or organization based in Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The TLD is administered by EURid, a consortium originally consisting of the national ccTLD registry operators of Belgium, Sweden, and Italy, joined later by the national registry operator of the Czech Republic. Trademark owners were able to submit registrations through a sunrise period, in an effort to prevent cybersquatting. Full registration started on 7 April 2006.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">.uk</span> Internet country code top-level domain for the United Kingdom

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

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CentralNic Group PLC is a British multinational internet services holding company headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Its subsidiaries provide domain name registry and registrar services, in addition to associated products and services, including web hosting, brand management, and domain parking.

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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, GMX, WEB.DE and 1&1 Versatel.

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.

Heart Internet is a web hosting company based in Nottingham, England selling domain names, shared hosting, reseller hosting and servers. It has been a subsidiary of UK based hosting and domain registration company Host Europe Group since 2011. Heart Internet is the 2nd largest web-host in the UK for websites hosted.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Easily Ltd</span>

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References

  1. "123-reg: About". LinkedIn. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  2. "123 Reg". 123-reg.co.uk. Retrieved 8 January 2022.
  3. "Registrar List - Nominet". Nominet. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  4. 1 2 "GoDaddy to buy Host Europe for $1.82 billion". Reuters. 6 December 2016. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  5. "Where To Register Domain Names And Host Your Web Site". King Solutions. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  6. "Welcome to HEG - Inspiring Next Generation Businesses". HEG. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  7. 1 2 Media, Insider. "Host Europe swoops for Heart Internet". Insider Media Ltd. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  8. "Notts Internet Company Acquired By Plc. - Information Technology and Telecoms - UK". www.mondaq.com. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  9. Richardson, Tim. "Pipex acquires Host Europe for £31m". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 12 May 2023.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 "Welcome to HEG". HEG. Archived from the original on 28 September 2019. Retrieved 22 March 2016.
  11. "123-REG LIMITED - Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Archived from the original on 11 February 2020. Retrieved 11 February 2020.
  12. "DomainInformer : Webfusion opens new £2.5m UK data centre". www.domaininformer.com. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  13. Ltd, Webfusion. "Awards | Find out more About Webfusion UK". www.webfusion.co.uk. Archived from the original on 9 July 2013. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  14. reporter, Chris Foxx Technology. "Web host 123-reg deletes sites in clean-up error". BBC News. Retrieved 24 April 2016.
  15. "Exclusive: 123-reg suffered serious security lapse while deleting 67 servers". Cloud Pro. Retrieved 24 April 2016.