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Domainmonster joins 123-reg stable

Mesh Digital, owner of the Domainmonster and Domainbox registrars, has been acquired by rival/partner Hosting Europe Group for an undisclosed sum.
Operating mainly in the UK and Germany, the buyer says it is the largest privately owned hosting company in Europe, already the owner of large registrars including 123-reg/Webfusion, a Mesh reseller.
“They’ve been a technology partner of ours for some time with the Domainbox product, so it’s the logical partner for us,” Mesh CEO Matt Mansell said.
“Our focus isn’t on hosting,” he added. “They’ll bring a good range of hosting and software-as-a-service products to our customers and we’ll bring good domain services to their customers.”
Mansell will join Host Europe as head of domain strategy.
The fact that new gTLDs are expected to launch next year was not a particular driver of the deal, he said.
With its new acquisition, Host Europe will have five million domains under management, according to the company.
Mesh, based in Godalming, UK (it’s 30 miles away and I’ve never heard of it either) has 15 employees and turnover of about $5 million, Mansell said.

DomainMonster gets .co accreditation

DomainMonster has announced that it’s the first UK-based domain name registrar to get a .co accreditation.
The partnership comes as .CO Internet expands its registrar channel beyond the initial 10 that were approved when it launched a year ago.
The registry announced in April that it would add 20 new registars over the next 12 months.
DomainMonster has been selling .co domains as a reseller of Colombian registrar Domino Amigo for the last year.
The company says did a pretty brisk trade on the first day of .co availability, securing more .co names in the first 10 minutes than any other registrar, with a 90% success rate.
I’ve heard from a few places recently that Go Daddy may have even asked DomainMonster to submit launch-day registrations on its behalf.
The company also has a new reseller platform of its own, DomainBox, which will also make .co domains available to partners.