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Namecheap posts $37 million revenue in Q1

by — Domain Registrars 2 Comments

Company’s revenue tops forecast for Q1.

Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall

Privately held domain name registrar Namecheap has reported $37 million in gross revenue for Q1 2019. This represents 21% year-over-year growth and is about $3 million more than the company forecasted.

Namecheap expects to generate $148 million in revenue for 2019. It added 235,000 customers in the first quarter.

The registrar now has about 10.5 million domains under management, up from 10.0 million in September 2018.

Namecheap CEO Richard Kirkendall told Domain Name Wire that the company is continuing to see growth in add-on products. The company is also shifting to higher-quality domains.

“That’s why the growth with domains under management is a bit slower,” he explained. “The lower priced TLDs (under a dollar) that we’ve shifted away from are cycling through as they have lower renewal rates. So, in essence, we are focusing on quality over quantity when it comes to domains and it reflects directly in our revenue numbers.”

Namecheap is the seventh largest registrar for .com and the second largest registrar for new top level domain names.

.Com slips at GoDaddy

by — Domain Registrars 8 Comments

Expirations outpaced new registrations at GoDaddy in December.

ICANN has published the latest official data from Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) about the .com namespace. This registrar-by-registrar report covers December 2018.

Something interesting happened in December: GoDaddy’s .com domains under management (DUMs) dropped. I’ve tracked monthly numbers for a long time and don’t recall this happening in recent history.

The drop isn’t due to a large outbound transfer. In fact, GoDaddy’s net transfer loss was less than 10,000. It’s just that more .com names expired at GoDaddy than it got in new registrations.

Note that this only includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains. It doesn’t include GoDaddy’s smaller registrars and the ones it picked up in the Host Europe Group acquisition.

Now, to the numbers. Here’s how registrars did in terms of new .com registrations.

1. GoDaddy.com* (NYSE: GDDY) 824,821 (865,438 in November)
2. Xin Net Technology Corporation 207,506 (152,143)
3. Alibaba (HiChina) 169,910 (312,227)
4. Tucows** (NASDAQ:TCX) 155,809 (175,148)
5. NameCheap Inc. 129,114 (157,607)
6. Web.com++ 101,629 (97,702)
7. NameSilo (CSE:URL) 94,849 (130,713)
8. Endurance+ (NASDAQ: EIGI) 91,577 (123,087)
9. Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) 85,799 (88,236)
10. United Internet^ (FRA: UTDI) 60,004 (66,501)

Here’s the leaderboard of the top registrars in terms of total .com registrations as of the end of November 2018.

1. GoDaddy* 49,354,689 (49,370,531 in October)
2. Tucows** 12,583,119 (12,659,835)
3. Endurance+ 7,124,825 (7,179,580)
4. Web.com++ 6,726,237 (6,732,478)
5. Alibaba 6,248,273 (6,192,801)
6. United Internet^ 5,640,149 (5,666,856)
7. Namecheap 4,535,855 (4,515,221)
8. Xin Net Technology Corporation 2,987,431 (2,792,514)
9. Google 2,106,955 (2,057,844)
10. GMO 1,953,479 (1,964,580)

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

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

Iceland’s .Is domain is now easier to register

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Namecheap becomes biggest registrar to offer .Is domains.

Picture of waterfall in Iceland

This picture of Iceland makes me want to visit. Or at least register a .Is domain name.

Country code domain names are an interesting animal. Some registries make it very difficult to register them; others market them heavily through the registrar channel.

One domain that has traditionally been difficult or expensive to register is Iceland’s .IS domain.

There are a few registrars, typically brand protection registrars, that carry them. Prices are usually $80 or more. Or you can create an account directly with the registry to register one.

But now Namecheap, a top five registrar, is offering .Is domains for about $40 per year. That’s about the same price as going direct.

DomainTools estimates that there are 64,000 registered .Is domains. But with no premiums, there are quite a few good keywords available.

It will be interesting to watch .Is and see if easier registration and a big registrar help build the zone. Taken as the word ‘is’, it’s kind of cool. Of course, there’s also that terrorist group…

Moniker to take over Alpnames domain names

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

CentralNic registrars will pick up 680,000 domain names.

Moniker.com website

Three domain name registrars owned by CentralNic (London AIM: CNIC) will take over the domain names from defunct domain name registrar AlpNames. All names will be managed through the Moniker.com website.

Moniker will take the domains that end in .biz, .com, .info, .net, .org. Two other registrar accreditations will handle .pro domains and new top level domains, but customers won’t realize this; they will still access the domains through the Moniker platform.

680,000 domain names will be moved in total.

Alpnames suddenly disappeared this month, leaving customers worried about how to access and transfer their domains. There was a workaround through Alpnames’ registrar platform LogicBoxes, but some customers reported that they were unable to transfer out domains through this system.

Moniker was a popular domain name registrar for domain name investors until a bungled platform switch in 2014. It was acquired by CentralNic when the company bought Key-Systems last year.

Tucows acquires Ascio as consolidation continues

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Tucows acquires another reseller registrar.

Ascio domain name registrar logoTucows (NASDAQ: TCX) has acquired reseller registrar Ascio Technologies from CSC for $29.44 million.

Ascio has 1.8 million domains under management and 500 active resellers. Compared to Enom, which Tucows acquired two years ago, Ascio has fewer but bigger resellers.

By selling Ascio, CSC it focusing on its brand management registrar.

Ascio has a strong presence in Europe with a headquarters in Denmark and office in Germany. It’s also known for carrying lots of country code top level domains, which will help Tucows expand the number of TLDs available.

According to the release, Ascio had approximately $4 million in annual EBITDA. Tucows had already included the Ascio contribution in the latest financial guidance it provided last month.

Tucows says it expects cost synergies in the deal and this makes sense. The company is already rebuilding its platform to run both Enom and OpenSRS, Tucows’ other reseller registrar.