Fasthosts was originally started by Andrew Michael, then aged 17, as part of an A-level school project.

[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.

[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.

[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.