Company reinvigorates reseller program with legacy brand.
Domain name registrar Tucows is breathing new life into its reseller program by reintroducing an old brand: OpenSRS.
Tucows was the first reselling registrar on the web back in 1999, claims Tucows VP of Marketing and Product Management Ken Schafer. Tucows hopes to leverage the OpenSRS brand to create a consistent reseller brand. “We’re proud of those roots,” said Schafer in an interview with Domain Name Wire. “We’ve been adding new services and we haven’t put those under the OpenSRS brand.”
The majority of Tucows’ business comes from its 9,000 resellers. Shafer said that 75% of the original 200 registrars that signed up with Tucows are still active with the program.
Compared to GoDaddy’s popular WildWestDomains reseller program, Tucows’ program was designed for complimentary businesses to integrate Tucows’ products into their systems through technical means such as an API. In other words, there’s no “push button” set up on Tucows’ current system.
“We are in the background,” said Schafer. “It’s a white label service that allows our resellers to shine and maintain the customer relationship.”
In conjunction with the relaunch of the OpenSRS brand, Tucows is launching a new corporate web site at TucowsInc.com. OpenSRS.com will be the hub and information site for resellers.
Cowkillaz says
“The majority of Tucows’ business comes from its 9,000 resellers.”
What they failed to mention was how many domain names in tucows portfolio came from those same 9,000 resellers customers. Tucows most profitable venture will continue to bring in more profit in the future as the resellers domains expire and tucows moves more domains in to their own portfolio. blech!
Mike says
OpenSRS is not long for this world. Some resellers were making money from parked domains but OpenSRS is no longer refunding the 50/50 split. Sure they’ll credit your reseller account but don’t ask for a refund of the surplus unless you like getting months of excuses and no payment.
Reseller contract:
“OpenSRS will refund any unused portion of your account balance within two
weeks after receiving a written request.”
Don’t believe it. Since the program began I’ve never been paid on time and now I’m not getting paid at all.