123-reg

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, 123-reg became the UK's largest domain registrar, according to the company's parent.[3]

In 2009, Host Europe Group organised its UK operations under the Webfusion Ltd group but kept both brands.[3][9] The same year, Webfusion became the first UK web host to offer Windows Server 2008 web hosting,[3] and the company opened a £2.5 million data centre in Leeds.[10] Also in 2009, 123-reg became the first UK domain registrar to have 2 million domain names on register.[3] 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.[11] In 2012, it became the first UK domain registrar to have 3 million domain names on register.[3]

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.[12] 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.[13]

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