Starting in 1983 as a home-based business in Scotland, AFD began life providing office and computer equipment and maintaining charity databases – especially their mailing lists. This naturally progressed into the supply of both computer systems and computer training to the charity sector in 1985. AFD MailCode (since renamed MailSaver), a solution that sorts mailing data to achieve maximum discounts on postage, was launched in 1988. Having built up considerable expertise in addressing, AFD Postcode (which offered street level address entry and validation) was launched in late 1994, and in 1995 AFD Software Ltd was incorporated to focus on the new aspect of the AFD business. Costing a fraction of comparable products, AFD Postcode brought rapid addressing within reach of smaller organisations – and, even more importantly, allowed it to be closely integrated into a wide range of everyday applications that used addresses.
Following rapid expansion (still in the house where AFD began), the business needed a new base from which to expand and grow, so relocated to Ramsey in the Isle of Man in 1997. That growth and development have continued, always paralleled by investment in high-quality infrastructure, including new buildings purchased in 1998 and again in 2005. More recently, 2015 saw the move to the current head office, situated at the 25-acre Mountain View Innovation Centre located just outside Ramsey, owned and developed by the AFD Group.
Today, AFD Software serves some of the UK’s largest (and smallest) organisations across every sector with a host of solutions that validate Name, Address, Email, Phone and Bank data within business-critical systems and applications.
