A Leader in the UK and Germany

Host Europe

Leading provider of hosting and domain services to SMEs

Digital Infrastructure
United Kingdom
2010
Realised
20%

YoY growth

3m

Registered domain names

730k

SME customers

A leading provider of web hosting and domain registration services to SMEs and individual customers in the UK and Germany. Host Europe Group (“Host Europe”) was founded in 1997 and operates under the “webfusion” and “123-reg” brands in the UK and the “Host Europe” brand in Germany.  Montagu established a close relationship with the management, and a clear understanding of the business and were then offered exclusivity in October 2010.

A Montagu business

  • Large customer base of 730,000 SMEs
  • Highly scalable technology platform
  • Clear market leader in UK and Germany – #1 player in UK domain registration and #1 in the European Virtual Private Servers (“VPS”) market

Structural change to acclerate grwoth

Montagu supported management in transitioning Host Europe from a country-based to a product-based organisation.  This enabled the team to accelerate organic growth, which was complemented by a number of strategic acquisitions.

Given strong interest in the business during our ownership, we completed the sale of Host Europe to private equity fund Cinven in August 2013.