Fasthosts

Fasthosts
Company typePrivate limited company
IndustryInternet services
Founded1999
FounderAndrew Michael
Headquarters
Gloucester
,
England
ParentUnited Internet
Websitehttps://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]

  1. ^ a b 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.