Deloitte Technology Fast 50: No. 2
Second-placed in the Deloitte Fast 50 2009, Heart Internet Ltd has seen a spectacular annual growth rate of 8548 per cent over the last five years.
Based in the Midlands, the company provides hosting and domain name registration to individuals, SMEs and resellers, with the latter making up about 50 per cent of its customer base. Heart is currently responsible for more than 400,000 domains and employs 40 people.
The company was launched in 2004 by WebFusion founders Jonathan Brealey and Tim Beresford. Jonathan Brealey said: "After leaving WebFusion, we felt that there was an opportunity for a more automated approach to hosting. When we started out in 1997 a lot of processes were manual, and these soak up a lot of time and resources. We realised that we could design these out by founding a new hosting entity, and Heart was born. We offer a very bespoke service, as weve designed everything from the ground up, which gives us a lot of power over the final product."
Brealey believes that it is customer service that holds the key to the company's success, rather than pure technology. "We have a variety of feedback mechanisms built in, and all this information lands in my inbox. Trawling through these customer comments throws up consistent themes and trends which are no-brainers to respond to. For example, we're launching an iPhone app for resellers within the month, because it was requested so much. Now our resellers will be able to set up new domains, email boxes, etc as well as administer existing accounts without firing up their laptop.
"The reality is that customer service is expensive, and it's easy for businesses to think that there's a saving to be made there. However, that just drives your customers away. We have a great retention rate and are seeing a continuous influx of customers transferring from our competitors. Keeping us 'sticky' is critical to our success."
The business has been growing organically with minimal advertising spend, and Brealey believes that there is still considerable growth to be had in the UK market in spite of challenging market conditions. "There's a lot more of the market to convert yet, so we can continue to concentrate on our core business and grow organically. I've been down the acquisition route before, and it can dilute and distract, rather than strengthen. We've also seen more new SME registrations during the recession than before, so I think this is only the beginning of the trend."
