It was founded in 1993 as an offshoot of the hackers club Hack-Tic[1][2] by Felipe Rodriquez, Rop Gonggrijp, Paul Jongsma and Cor Bosman, while based in Amsterdam.

It was the sixth provider in the Netherlands (after NLnet, SURFnet, HCC!hobbynet, Knoware and IAF)[3] and the second company to offer Internet access to private individuals.

In November 2019 the committee launched a new company named Freedom Internet, meant to serve as an ideological successor to XS4ALL, and supported by a crowdfunding action that raised 2.5 million euro.

A summary judgment followed in 1995, full proceedings in 1999, an appeal in 2001 which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Netherlands in December 2005, all in favor of the provider and Karin Spaink, putting freedom of speech above copyright in some cases.

In December 1996, XS4ALL put the Belgrade radio station B92 online using streaming audio technology in response to the jamming of its broadcasts by the regime of Slobodan Milošević.

XS4ALL installed a leased line to the radio station in response to a request from Adriënne van Heteren, a Dutch citizen who went to Belgrade to set up various cultural activities.

XS4ALL insisted that the case be settled by the courts, because it did not want to infringe on its customers' rights of free expression; however, the requests to follow traditional legal paths were ignored by the German ICTF.

Because international telephone connections from Egypt to the rest of the world were not blocked, people could dial into the modems in Amsterdam and from there subsequently log into the internet using username and password xs4all.