Tucows overtakes “original” registrar Network Solutions.
I’ve been doing a lot or ranking watching over the past 48 hours. I’m a Texas Longhorns fan, and axiously awaited results from the Coaches Poll, Harris Poll, and BCS over the weekend. The Longhorns ended in a three way tie with Texas Tech and Oklahoma University in the Big 12 South. The three way tie was broken by BCS rankings — and OU narrowly edged out Texas. So the Longhorns beat both of the teams in the Big 12 Championship by double digits this year. Go figure.
But there’s another ranking that has been shaken up lately. The latest data from RegistrarStats.com places Tucows (AMEX: TCX) neck-and-neck with the “original” domain registrar Network Solutions for total domains under management. According to the site, both registrars have about 6.65 million domains under management. Tucows has picked up 49,860 registrations in the past month and Network Solutions lost about 6,000 in the same period. In the past 60 days Tucows has picked up over 100,000 registrations, second only to GoDaddy.
The battle of domain registrars is really a battle for second place. With over 30 million domains registered, GoDaddy has almost four times as many domains under management as the second largest registrar (eNom).
Have an opinion about any of these registrars? Let your voice be heard at Registrar Judge.
RegFeeNames.com says
Still dont know why people use Tucows there is too much risk of your great names being snapped by them if you ever forget to renew them.
Regards,
Robbie
Andrew says
@ RegFeeNames.com – it’s no different with Network Solutions, eNom, GoDaddy, Register.com, et al. Just because those outfits (usually) sell the domains to someone else for a nice profit rather than keep them to themselves doesn’t change much.
Jamie says
I was pretty close with my guess on the 24th (link) but have been watching this as well. I wouldn’t be surprised to see NSI drop out of the top 5 over time…
Lawrence says
I thought 1and1 would be bigger than that.
As for GoDaddy, advertising advertising advertising…they advertise a lot, and get good spokesman and women for their product.
Michael Berkens says
Andrew
To hell with the registrar stats, on to the important stuff, Texas got robbed.
You guys beat Oklahoma and that should be the first tie breaker.
Having said that
Go Gators!!!!
Varun says
Why are tucow even up there? Whats so good bout em?
Rob Sequin says
1. I still have no idea how to register a domain name at tucows.com so I don’t know how they are the #1 registrar when they don’t register domains.
2. Did they rise or did NSI fall?
Jamie says
@ Rob
Tucows is #3 by volume of domain names registered.
This is what it states on domainhelp.Tucows.com
“Tucows is a wholesaler of domain names and other Internet services to ISPs and web hosting companies worldwide. We do not sell domain names directly to consumers.”
To your number 2: It was a combo of both. NSI has been losing domains for months now and Tucows has been gaining.
Andrew says
@ Rob @ Jamie – Tucows is launching an end user registration service at Hover.com. To date it’s almost all done through resellers, although the company did acquire a registrar.
Rob Sequin says
“We do not sell domain names directly to consumers.”
That’s what I find odd. I cannot register a domain at tucows. I have to sign up to be a reseller so I can register a domain at tucows?
That’s like forcing me to become a car dealer so I can buy a car.
Makes no sense to me.
Rob Sequin says
Why do they need to use hover.com? Why can’t they use tucows.com?
Again, just baffled.
Andrew says
@ Michael – yes, we feel robbed. The first tie-breaker is head to head, but the problem is there was a three way circle: Texas beat OU which beat Texas Tech which beat Texas. Apparently BCS rank was the 5th tie-breaker.
Some other conferences use BCS, but if the top two teams are within 5 of each other in the BCS then they use the head to head between those two teams.
Andrew says
@ Robert – Tucows was originally a site for software reviews and downloads, which it still is. It’s a small part of the company’s revenue, but probably higher margin than much of the domain business. I think over time they hope to integrate the software business with Butterscotch.com. But I still think butterscotch.com is just a diversion.
jp says
@Rob
I recently in my consulting business had to help transfer a domain from Tucows for a customer of mine to Godaddy (because they needed control of their own DNS, and unless I Missed something tucows has no DNS controls). I definitely spent a while looking for the way to log into their account. Eventually I got in through DomainHelp.Tucows.com, and clicked one of the links. I wish I could show you the interface they had for controlling the domain name, it was like straight out of 1997. All it seemed I could do was edit contact information and change nameservers. Funny, I still didn’t see a place to register another domain.
Regarding the graph Andrew posted, I’m frankly surprised to see Moniker down so low on the list. I feel like my mind has been tricked into thinking they are bigger than they are because I am in the industry, and of course Moniker comes up all the time. I guess the outside world doesn’t know about them yet.
Stephen Douglas says
Andrew, I feel for you on the BCS crap rating system. Oregon 2000 was #2, and we got pushed back just for being in Pac -10, where we beat #3 Colorado (which had beat #1)
Then last year, mighty Boise State, not even a BCS contender then, took on #4 Big 12 Champ, Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl, and handed Oklahoma their asses in what many say was the most exciting football game ever played. It was definitely the most exciting one I ever saw, and most my friends agreed.
I’d like to see what Boise State does again this year.
Even though I’m not a southern football team fan, the Longhorns should have pulled it out over Oklahoma at least.
James McNally (OpenSRS) says
@jp
James from Tucows/OpenSRS here. I just wanted to make it clear that we’re a wholesaler of domain names and we sell the vast majority of these through our network of resellers. The interface you saw is something that our resellers can use to make changes. They can also use our API to integrate with their own sites. It may have been difficult to find your way into this interface at the tucows.com site because we now communicate with our resellers at opensrs.com. We felt it necessary to separate the brands because as Andrew mentioned, tucows.com is widely known as our software download site.
We’ll be the first to admit that the reseller interface is in need of a makeover, and it’s something that we’re devoting lots of resources to in 2009. For the average person who just wants to register a domain name, we’ve got hover.com in preview right now, which finally makes buying a domain name a simple process.
Rob Sequin says
Thanks for posting.
“which finally makes buying a domain name a simple process.”
It’s almost 2009. About time right? 🙂
Dave Woroch (Tucows) says
Hi, this is Dave Woroch from Tucows. Over the next few days, Tucows will actually jump to almost 7.2 million names under management, taking us well past Network Solutions. This will happen because we are migrating 550,000 domains from the It’s Your Domain portfolio, an acquisition we made last
year. We are in the process of consolidating these domains under the Tucows registrar tag, and this should be complete by Wednesday.
For those of you not familiar with It’s Your Domain, they operated an affiliate reseller channel. This acquisition allowed us to extend the breadth and size of the Tucows reseller channel. We are migrating more than 900 IYD affiliates to our new OpenSRS hosted storefront, which we have been building over the past few months. Consolidating the IYD affiliates into the OpenSRS platform will simplify our operations, and the addition of a storefront service extends the functionality of OpenSRS and positions us for further growth.
More information about our new storefront:
http://opensrs.com/blog/2008/11/a-sneak-peek-at-the-new-opensrs-storefront/
Joe says
For those of us who are just domainers and dont build sites I wonder if they will offer a lower price, the basic reg fee is 15.00 per name which will see a lot of names transfered out at that price.
Stephen Douglas says
To David Woroch of TUCOWS:
See this interesting story on IYD and how they probably obtained many of their 550k domains for your acquisition:
Tucows released one of the domains I lost through IYD and nabbed for themselves when IYD never updated the whois info after I bought the domain on Snapnames last year.
Screenshots included:
http://www.successclick.com/itsyourdomaincom-tries-to-pull-a-gw-bush_2008_01_21/
Stephen Douglas says
I should state that Tucows “released” the domain “back” to me that I lost through IYD incompetence or fraud, after I posted about four blog articles and 10 negative comments on other blogs, such as DNW. Better late than never (11 months wait). I still lost one other domain through IYD. Worst registrar experience ever in ten years.
Rob Sequin says
I agree with Stephen. I had IYD catch two domains for me and both were a hassle getting them out.
I got the strong feeling that they were trying to make it difficult for me to transfer out as a business practice designed to keep customers or worse, keep domains that do not get renewed.
Tucows is probably getting mostly drops from customers who could never access their account to transfer out or renew their domain.