123 Reg is a British

domain registrar A domain name registrar is a company that manages the reservation of Internet domain names. A domain name registrar must be accredited by a generic top-level domain (gTLD) registry or a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registry. A registra ...

and

web hosting 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 we ...

company founded in 2000 and now under the ultimate ownership of

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. , GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The ...

. The company claims to be the UK's largest accredited domain registrar and provides Internet services to small- and medium-sized business. From 2003 to 2017, 123 Reg was part of

Host Europe Group Host Europe Group (formerly Pipex Communications plc and GX Networks) is an American-owned, European-located website hosting, email and domain name registrar company headquartered Hayes, West London. Founded as GX Networks in 1997, the company w ...

(HEG). In April 2017, American hosting company GoDaddy acquired HEG for 1.69 billion euros ($1.82 billion).

History

123 Reg was founded in 2000 by Jonathan and Tim Beresford-Brealey, who prior to this had also set up Webfusion Internet Solutions Ltd in 1997. In 2003, 123 Reg and Webfusion were acquired by Host Europe Group (HEG). In 2004, 123 Reg became the UK's largest domain registrar, according to the company's parent. In 2009, Host Europe Group organised its UK operations under the Webfusion Ltd group but kept both brands. The same year, Webfusion became the first UK web host to offer

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on F ...

web hosting, and the company opened a £2.5 million data centre in

Leeds Leeds () is a city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the third-largest settlement (by popula ...

. Also in 2009, 123 Reg became the first UK domain registrar to have 2 million domain names on register. 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. In 2012, it became the first UK domain registrar to have 3 million domain names on register. On 16 April 2016, 123 Reg admitted a major deletion of a large number of

virtual private servers A virtual private server (VPS) is a virtual machine sold as a service by an Internet hosting service. The virtual dedicated server (VDS) also has a similar meaning. A virtual private server runs its own copy of an operating system (OS), and cus ...

(VPSs) caused by an error during what should have been routine maintenance. 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. In April 2017, American hosting company

acquired 123 Reg's parent company, HEG, for 1.69 billion euros ($1.82 billion).

References

External links

* {{Official website Companies based in the London Borough of Hillingdon Cryptography Domain name registrars Web hosting Internet properties established in 2000