We’re celebrating twenty-five years in hosting

Back in 2020, we wrote a post to mark our twentieth anniversary. It was a deep look through the ups, downs, and quirks of running a hosting company for two decades. Five years on, here we are again for our twenty-fifth birthday. A whole quarter of a century.

When we first set up 34SP.com in 2000, it was just two computer science graduates from Manchester with a pound-a-month hosting plan, a couple of borrowed servers, and a vague sense that things could be done better.   What did “better” mean? Well, we’d be honest. We’d be reliable. We’d give back. We’d actually pick up the phone here in the UK to help customers. And somehow, twenty-five years later, those promises have carried us through.  

Independence isn’t always easy, but worth it in our experience.   Most of the hosting companies we started out alongside, sadly, no longer exist in any recognisable form. They’ve been bought, merged, rebranded, or quietly disappeared along the way. We’ve stayed proudly independent, based here in Manchester, building and running our own infrastructure in the UK. 

That independence hasn’t always made life easier…  It’s meant turning down investment, taking slower routes to growth, and riding out a few storms on our own. But it’s given us the freedom to stick to our values and look after our customers without compromise. 

What we’ve built along the way

Some of the things we’re proudest of over these twenty-five years:

• Our Charity Hosting Programme. Since 2004 we’ve provided more than £785,000 worth of free hosting to over 700 UK charities. From youth groups to food banks, they’ve done the important work; we’ve just kept the servers running.
  
• An ongoing active commitment to sustainability. Every website we host runs on 100% renewable energy. We’re partners with The Green Web Foundation and have worked with Ecologi to make sure our impact is as positive as possible.
  
• Reviews are just one marker of quality, but we’re proud to have maintained a 4.9 Trustpilot rating across over 500 reviews. Our customers know they can rely on us to look after one of their most important assets. That trust comes from a support team that genuinely cares and from a culture where long-serving staff stay to provide consistent, expert help.
  
• Community, from sponsoring every UK WordCamp for multiple years to cheering on the open-source ecosystem, we’ve always believed in putting something back into the communities we’re part of.  Members of our team just returned from Donegal, sponsoring TBEX Europe for the second year running!
• Over the last five years, we have achieved internationally recognised ISO 9001, 14001, and 27001 certifications. Meeting and exceeding these standards has pushed us to keep on improving our approach to security, sustainability, and quality.  

What hasn’t changed

When I re-read our twentieth anniversary post, I was struck by how much of it still rings true. Hosting is still a tough business. Customers still arrive at our door with horror stories about being let down elsewhere. And our best days are still the ones where we help someone get back on track. 

Looking forward

So what does the next five, ten, twenty-five years hold? The truth is, we don’t know. The web will keep evolving, and new technologies will emerge (what comes after generative AI models, I wonder?). What we do know is that we’ll keep doing what we’ve always done: being independent, staying rooted in Manchester, and running a company that puts people first. 

To everyone who’s been part of the journey so far, our customers, our team, our partners, thank you. Without you, there is no 34SP.com.