Company to create “reseller in a box” program.
Wholesale domain registrar Tucows is launching a new program for resellers that will allow them to open a domain registration store in a matter of minutes.
Tucows reseller program, dubbed OpenSRS, has traditionally been geared to technically savvy companies wanting to add new services to their offerings. A technical integration was required.
On the company’s earnings conference call yesterday, CEO Elliot Noss said the company will now offer a push-button registrar store that sounds similar to what GoDaddy offers through its Wild West Domains service.
“We are reducing the time it takes for a new reseller to start selling our services,” said Noss. “This includes improving on our self serve tools that help new resellers to get signed up and selling faster. Also, we are developing a hosted storefront for resellers who don’t want to invest the development time and resources to undertake a deep technical integration with our systems. The launch of storefront this fall will allow resellers to go from signup to selling our service in minutes instead of months.”
GoDaddy’s popular Wild West Domains service lets resellers without technical skills set up a storefront to offer domain registration, web hosting, and related services. Wild West Domains costs anywhere from $99 to $299 per year for resellers who are then able to set their own prices and profit from markups.
Wild West Domains has over 3 million domains under management according to RegistrarStats.
Mike says
OpenSRS is history. 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. Tucows to Compete? I don’t think so!