Established 2003
Freethought Internet has been serving customers websites for well over a decade now. Originally founded by our current director Kieran (aged just 16) in 2003 as Xion Internet, in 2006 we merged with the company ran by Edward and Matthew to become Freethought. We started with just a single server, as of today we have racks and racks of servers hosting thousands of businesses across two data centres, and are present at two more data centres where we connect to three peering LANs and three Tier 1 transit providers. We really have come a long way!
The fact we've been around so long gives us a wealth of knowledge and experience, we're not some fly by night hosting company here today and gone tomorrow; a decade of experience means we know precisely what we're doing and have a very clear idea of where we're going, and how to get there. We're a hosting company you can definitely rely on.
Early Freethought servers circa 2008.
Our network
Our redundant multi-homed network spans the UK from London to Manchester.
Learn about our network
Passionate about quality service
If there is just a single thing you need to know about us more than anything, it's how much we care about customer experience. For us nothing is more important than our customers being happy and not having any problems. We sometimes go to ridiculous lengths to help our customers out when they're stuck, sometimes with issues that aren't even anything to do with the service we provide them!
At Freethought we believe that you should never dread calling support like you might with some companies, you won't go through to a foreign call centre, you won't have to go through impossibly complicated security questions or dizzyingly complicated phone menus. It's very simple, pick up the phone and call our local rate number or send us an email and someone really friendly (located in the UK) who knows what they're doing will then help you out as best they can in language that you understand and solve your problem. Simple!
Don't just take our word for it though, check out the latest reviews to the right and you'll see how almost every one of them compliments us on the service and support we provide.
If that isn't enough to convince you we also hold ISO 9001 and 27001 certification for quality management and information security, so now you know we're serious. If you like you can request to see our ISO policies and procedures if you don't believe us.
Our data centres
We are present in four industry leading data centres in the UK including one of the most connected data centres on Earth; Telehouse North, London.
Learn about our datacentres
Ethical business
When running a business, profit and success can easily distract aims and targets while more important aspects such as honesty and integrity get forgotten. At Freethought we want to respond differently and make ethical decisions about how our business is run, this means being kind to our customers, our environment, and to society as a whole.
Ethical consideration reaches into every facet of our business from pricing our products, terms and conditions, analytics and tracking, marketing and advertising, employees pay and conditions, sourcing hardware, our supply chain, taxation, packaging, and waste. We have a detailed ethical and environmental policy that sets out to identify how we meet our ethical values in the core areas we feel are important ahead of profit, click the button below to download and read.
Freethought ethical and environmental policy
Considering ourselves ethical is one thing, but we wanted to ensure that we really were hitting the mark and so we asked Ethical Consumer a leading ethics publication to screen the company against their detailed ethical criteria, following this screening we received an ethiscore of 14.5 out of 15. You can download and read the full report below.
We feel that taxation is an integral part of our ethics and that as members of society we have an obligation to pay what is fair. To this end we publish financial information showing the profit we make, and the tax we pay so everyone can be reassured we're doing the right and fair thing with our finances.
Environment
There is no planet B (Unless Elon Musk gets his way) and so we need to look after planet Earth, one of the most important things we need to do is not just reduce but reverse carbon emissions in our atmosphere to pre-industrial levels.
We have partnered with Ecologi to achieve this, we plant a number of trees each month through Ecologi to counter our emissions, and then some more on top of that to ensure we remove more CO2 than we produce. We also periodically pay for extra trees and offsets as a one off top up, or to offset customer sales or other activities, or just because we want to. The money we pay goes towards reforestation projects in places like Kenya, or renewable energy projects in places like Indonesia, India, and Chile.