Namesco

names.co.uk

Type	Private
Industry	Internet
Founded	(1996)
Headquarters	Worcester, UK
Key people	Chirag Patel, Director Sarah Bratchell, Director Claudio Corbetta, CEO Stephen Ewart, Director Federico Bronzi, Director Lorenzo Lepri, Director
Products	Internet Services
Number of employees	120 (July 2014)
Slogan	Real people with the right solutions to help you succeed online
Website	http://www.names.co.uk

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.

History

• 1996: Founded as a small Internet Startup named "Names.co Internet Services Limited" originally based in North East England.

• 1997:: Another Internet Startup was founded by Kevin Savage, Jason Smith and John Sewell named Phase8.com "Webcall.com Limited" based in Worcester.

• 2000:: Following the dot com boom, Names.co Internet Services Limited became a Public Limited Company and floated on the London Unlisted Securities Market with a new name of Namesco Internet Plc.

• 2001: Namesco Internet Plc acquired Phase8.com "Webcall.com Limited" for the sum of £2,450,000. Despite acquiring smaller web hosting companies and resellers along the way such as SmartChoice on 1 April 2003 the "publicly quoted" Namesco struggled to be viable citing the increasingly competitive nature of the domain name and web hosting business, and the additional costs of maintaining listed status as the reasons for a lack of profitability.

• 2004: Accordingly, Namesco Internet PLC was the subject of a reverse takeover and its internet operations subject to a management buyout. The PLC "acquired" Larchland Limited for valuable mineral exploration rights and the business renamed as "Triple Plate Junction PLC." Triple Plates accounts for 2004 reveal losses of GBP£84,000 for the "Namesco" business prior to its disposal in January 2004. Indeed "Namesco" was hived down into a subsidiary and sold to "Womerah Limited." Womerah being the company connected to the outgoing board of directors, David Lees, Jason Smith and Kevin Savage. Although Namesco had an annual turnover of over GBP£1.1M, Womerah acquired the subsidiary for a consideration of GBP£253,343 of which only GBP£100,000 was required as a cash payment, to be made in two staged payments GBP£50,000. David Lees remained as a Director of both "Namesco Limited" and "Triple Plate Junction PLC." "TPJ" changed its activities to become a gold mining and exploration company with substantial activities in Vietnam. The now privately owned Namesco had the extra cash and agility to begin buying businesses which was key to the growth strategy. On 9 July, Namesco acquired NamesWeb; a small domain and web hosting business.On 17 September 2004, Namesco Ltd was able to "double" the size of its internet business by acquiring a competitor, the local and profitable Malvern based "Simply.com Limited" from the Coulson family for GBP£2.15M. Simply.Com Limited managed 92,000 domain names.

• 2005: On 3 March, Namesco Ltd acquired the assets of domain and hosting business Net2 Ltd. On 19 July, Namesco Ltd acquired the broadband business NDO Ltd. NDO also sold domain names, web hosting and dialup internet access. This acquisition allowed Namesco to offer its customers ADSL at competitive prices.

• 2006: In August 2006 it re-launched its broadband offerings

• 2007: On 18 July, Namesco Ltd was purchased by Register.it Spa, an Italian Internet company owned by Dada, for £24.5million. Register.it also owns Nominalia in Spain, and acquiring Namesco adds a substantial UK operation to the division.On 26 October, Namesco Ltd acquired Xsession.com Limited, a company in administration since 23 July 2007.^[1] On 13 November, Namesco Ltd acquired the assets of Serve360.com, a Domain Registration and Hosting company. On 13 December, Namesco Ltd acquired the assets of UKdomains.com, a domain registration and web Hosting company.

• 2008: On 28 May, Namesco Ltd acquired the assets of Register365, Ireland's largest hosting provider, through its subsidiary Namesco Ireland Ltd, adding 40,000 domains to its portfolio.

• 2009: In August after 10 years both Founders and Board Directors Kevin Savage and Jason Smith resigned from Namesco to focus on their new businesses, Ventutec Limited and Siteopia.com. This left, as new Directors, Chirag Patel (previously the Operations Manager) and Sarah Bratchell (previously the Finance Controller).

• 2010: Poundhost was acquired as a subsidiary of Namesco Limited

• 2014: Namesco has over 120 employees and continues to grow.

• 2014: Broadband customer base acquired by The Phone Co-op.

Awards

• Listed Finalists in UK's Best Shared Hosting provider at the Internet Service Providers (ISPA) awards 2011
• May 2009: Voted UK's Best Shared Hosting provider for the Second Year at the Internet Service Providers (ISPA) awards
• May 2009: Wins UK Web Hosting Directories Number One ‘Unix Web Hosting’ Award.
• April 2009: Wins WebHostDirectory’s Number One Award for Shared Hosting
• September 2008: Nominated for the PC Pro magazines Best Web Hosts Award 2008
• Won the Best Shared Hosting Award from the ISPA Awards in 2008.^[2]
• Finalist for Best Dedicated Hosting Award from the ISPA Awards in 2008.^[2]
• 2nd Best Small ISP Award from PC Advisor in 2007.^[3]
• Finalist for Best Consumer Broadband Award from the ISPA Awards in 2007.^[2]
• Finalist for Best Business Broadband Award from the ISPA Awards in 2007.^[2]
• Finalist for Best Consumer Email Award from the ISPA Awards in 2007.^[2]
• Finalist for Best Business Email Award from the ISPA Awards in 2007.^[2]
• Won the Best Buy for Broadband Award from PC Advisor in 2006.
• Won the Best Customer Satisfaction Award from PC Advisor in 2006.

Security Problems

13 January 2012 Namesco suffered a security breach which resulted in over 100 customers needing to cancel their cards. "...card details were leaked after hackers broke into Namesco's systems, Namesco warned that users' account administration email, account names, dates of birth, contact numbers and postal addresses may also have been exposed by the breach". Namesco notified the Information Commissioners Office about this loss, and customers were advised to update their passwords and cancel their card details.^{[4] [5]}

References

External links

• names.co.uk website
• Namesco buys Simply.com at The Register
• Official website of Triple Plate Junction PLC
• DaDa buys Namesco for 24.5 million at ISP Spy