Before the surge: .Com in March

Registrars saw an uptick in new registrations in March, which turned into a flood in April.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers March 2020.

This data gives the first inkling of increased demand for domains thanks to Covid-19, but the real surge began in April as companies quickly moved their businesses online. We’ll get that data next month.

Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations in March:

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 990,805 (970,641 in February)
2. Namecheap Inc. 220,563 (203,248)
3. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 201,660 (189,784)
4. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 167,966 (174,972)
5. Alibaba (HiChina) 168,265 (91,190)
6. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 144,355 (132,513)
7. Dynadot 105,006
8. Chengdu West 94,655 (61,674)
9. Wix (NASDAQ: WIX) 86,353 (75,407)
10. United Internet^ 71,767 (68,936)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations under management as of the end of March 2020.

1. GoDaddy* 52,559,293 (52,296,013 in February)
2. Tucows** 12,781,969 (12,791,432)
3. Web.com++ 7,119,532 (7,121,051)
4. Endurance+ 6,888,632 (6,851,967)
5. Alibaba 5,787,345 (5,747,031)
6. Namecheap 5,551,106 (5,431,296)
7. United Internet^ 5,521,784 (5,512,155)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 3,746,993 (3,961,980)
9. Google 3,367,072 (3,282,713)
10. GMO 2,313,794 (2,304,518)

Many domain companies have multiple accreditations and I’ve tried to capture the largest ones. See the notes below.

* Includes GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and 123 Reg
** Includes Tucows, Enom, Ascio and EPAG
+ Includes PDR, Domain.com, FastDomain and Bigrock. There are other Endurance registrars, but these are the biggest.
++ Includes Network Solutions, Register.com, and Crazy Domains/Dreamscape
^ Includes 1&1, PSI, Cronon, United-Domains, Arsys and world4you