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Mailchimp launches website builder

by — Services 1 Comment

Company that started as an email marketing platform is entering a crowded field.

Screenshots of websites built with Mailchimp's new website builder

These websites were build with Mailchimp’s new website builder, currently in beta.

Mailchimp is the latest company to get into the website builder game, taking on companies such as GoDaddy (NYSE: GDDY), Wix (NASDAQ: WIX), Squarespace and Weebly.

The company started as an email marketing platform but is expanding to become an all-in-one online marketing platform. It offers landing pages and online marketing as well.

Now it is introducing its own website builder in beta. It’s free to use, and paid Mailchimp customers can connect a custom domain name to their website. Mailchimp is also reselling domains through Tucows to allow customers to register domains through their Mailchimp account.

Here’s my question: when does Mailchimp rebrand as Chimp and buy Chimp.com?

The economics of .org domain names

by — Services 33 Comments

Ethos Capital just bought a license to print money.

Picture of printing press printing money

Yesterday, Internet Society announced it was selling the .Org registry to a private equity company. The price has not yet been disclosed, but it was surely a very high figure, as I will explain.

.Org is the second most valuable namespace behind .com. As of the end of July, there were 10.5 million .org domains registered.

Although many associate the name with non-profits, anyone can register a .org domain for just about any purpose. Some groups even register .org domains instead of .com.

Let’s look at the economics of the .org namespace.

To start, round down to 10 million domains. At $9.93 per domain, it brings in about $100 million in revenue at today’s wholesale price.

Costs are minimal. About $18 million to backend registry Afilias (which will be negotiated down again in the future), a few million to ICANN, some marketing budget to registrars and staff to help push the name. Call the staffing element about $3-4 million, but it could be lowered. Especially if you fold it into Donuts or another registry.

But Ethos Capital wasn’t paying just for this $100 million a year. ICANN has removed pricing caps on .org, so the company can charge whatever it wants for .org domains.

To maximize profits, it should wait a year until things quiet down and then implement an increase. Raise it 50% to $15? Double it to $20?

Let’s go with the $20 price tag. This would have only a slight impact on total .org registrations. A company using a .org isn’t going to switch domains over five or ten bucks a year. It’s too much work. Some people will drop excess domains and domainers will think twice. But I believe .org would lose no more than 10% of registrations.

So 9 million domains x 20 each = $180 million revenue. And the costs barely budge.

There’d be some uproar. But Ethos could offer free .org domains to non-profits that apply. “Hey, fill out this application that takes an hour telling us about the good work you do and you get your name for free.” Very few non-profits will take them up on this. They can do more with their hour than fill out an application to save twenty bucks.

Also, registrants can renew for up to 10 years in advance at today’s prices. Not bad for Ethos if people want to pay ten years’ worth of registrations in advance. Most won’t.

To keep the top of the funnel moving, the registry should offer discounted first-year registrations, as is typical these days. Maybe keep the retail price around $10-$15 for first-year registrations through rebates to registrars.

The registry can also hold back expiring .org domains and apply premium pricing tiers to them. This isn’t as effective as it once was because expired domain services transfer domains before they delete, but there’s still value here.

And the initial price increase is just the first one. They can easily raise prices from there, even if only a modest 10% per year.

Start adding this up and I’d be shocked if this wasn’t a solid ten-figure deal. Verisign, which runs .com, is valued in the stock market at $22 billion and it doesn’t have carte blanche to raise prices.

Breaking: Private Equity company acquires .Org registry

by — Services 47 Comments

Logo for .org domain, featuring a blue circle with white letters spelling ORGEthos Capital, led by former ABRY Partners Managing Partner, buys .Org registry.

I thought this might happen. And now it has.

Fresh off ICANN’s blunder letting Public Interest Registry set whatever price it wants for .org domain names, Internet Society (ISOC) has sold the .org registry Public Interest Registry (PIR) to private equity company Ethos Capital.

Game. Set. Match.

This gives Internet Society a huge (as yet unkown) endowment rather than worrying about what the future of the .org domain name holds. PIR generated $101 million in revenue in 2018 and contributed nearly $50 million to Internet Society. It contributed $74 million to ISOC in 2017.

ICANN made this deal much more valuable by removing all price controls on .org.

While Internet Society might not have wanted to raise prices, a private equity company surely will try to maximize the value of the registry.

In a release about the deal, Internet Society noted:

Today’s news has tremendous benefits for both the Internet Society and PIR.  The transaction will help the Internet Society to secure its future through more stable, diversified and sustainable financial resources than it has at present, allowing the organization to plan for the long term and advance its vision of an Internet for everyone on an even broader scale.  It will also enable PIR to continue expanding its mission and important work under new ownership — including its goal of keeping .ORG accessible and reasonably priced — while further strengthening and deepening its commitment to the .ORG Community.

We’ll have to see what “reasonably priced” means. Certainly, the goals of Ethos Capital are very different from Internet Society.

Ethos Capital is a new private equity firm lead by Erik Brooks. Brooks was at Abry Partners until earlier this year. Abry Partners acquired Donuts and installed former ICANN President of Global Domains Akram Atallah in the top spot there.

Donuts co-founder Jon Nevett left to be CEO of Public Interest Registry.

The other person at Ethos is former ICANN Senior Vice President Abusitta-Ouri.

Ethos appears to have just been founded. It acquired the domain name EthosCapital.com at the end of October through Afternic.

[Update: The firm might be tied to former ICANN CEO Fadi Chehadé as well.]

PIR CEO Jon Nevett commented to Domain Name Wire:

Our goal has always been to make .ORG accessible and reasonably priced – and that will continue under our new ownership. PIR has made reasonable decisions on price in the past, and we will uphold this spirit going forward. We would never make dramatic price increases as we know it would harm our registrants, as well as our registrars.

ICANN watcher George Kirikos brought up the potential of a PE sale when ICANN proposed the contractual changes removing price caps:

Some have suggested that the Internet Society and/or PIR would never raise fees by a large amount. However, “hope is not a strategy.” Past performance is no guarantee of the future. Leadership can change, as can priorities/missions. It’s clear from section 7.5 of the the draft contract itself:

https://www.icann.org/sites/default/files/tlds/org/org-proposed-renewal-18mar19-en.pdf

that ISOC/PIR could simply sell or assign the registry contract to another entity (e.g. Private Equity, just as registry operator Donuts was sold by its founders), and that new owner/entity could take the heat for future egregious fee increases. ICANN would not be able to stop such a deal. Such a sale would allow ISOC to create a huge endowment for itself worth billions of dollars, given that .org is arguably the second most desirable gTLD, after only .com.

This type of deal doesn’t happen overnight, and has likely been in the works for a while.

When ICANN decided to remove price restrictions on .org, my thought was this would be a pivitol moment in the history of ICANN. But it probably wouldn’t come back to bite it for another 5-10 years, at which point current leadership would have moved on.

But it came back to bite it now, and many more groups will call upon ICANN to justify its decision.

Public Interest Registry had operating income of $45.9 million in 2018. Any amount it increases prices falls directly to the bottom line.

I have reached out to Ethos for comment.

Update: Richard Kirkendall, CEO of Namecheap, which filed a reconsideration request with ICANN over the .org price cap removal, released this statement to DNW:

Obviously, we are disturbed by the timing of this transaction and how it reflects on the decision by ICANN to lift the price caps. While we all as registrars will be affected by this sale, the biggest losers will be our customers and all other .org holders who are sure to see their renewal prices increase over time.

Additional coverage:

The economics of .org domain names

The interesting connection between the .Org deal and ICANN

Note: this post has been updated throughout the day with more information and comments from the industry.

How to go to NamesCon for cheap

by — Services 2 Comments

Here are ways to save money on your trip to Austin.

Landscape of Austin, Texas with NamesCon logo over it

NamesCon is not an expensive conference to attend. However, two things give people pause before booking their travel.

First, NamesCon set the bar so low on prices in the past by going to The Tropicana that people are having sticker shock at traveling to Austin. The Trop is a crappy hotel with a commensurate price; it was about $120 or so a night with the “resort fee” before taxes. The Omni is a good hotel that costs about $100 more per night.

Second, as NamesCon CEO Soeren von Varchmin points out on the DNW Podcast airing Monday, many people who go to NamesCon go on their own dime. A company isn’t paying for them to attend, so they need to carefully consider the cost of going and what they get out of it.

Here are some ways you can save money on your accommodations.

As far as event tickets are concerned, there are lots of 30% off coupons out there. The ticket price will be much less than the hotel cost.

So if you’re looking to save money, here are five options for cheaper accommodations.

1. Share a room. That cuts your bill in half. You can even share a two-bedroom apartment.

2. Try The Guild. This Austin, Texas-based company rents apartments by the night. Not only can you “live like a local,” but there are lots of rooms available during the conference for less than $200.

3. Go to another downtown Austin hotel. The savings won’t be significant, but The Wyndham and Hamilton Inn & Suites are less than $200. (The Hamilton is nicer than expected for the brand.)

4. Stay further away from the venue. I don’t love this idea, but if the price is a deciding factor, there are options within a 20-minute drive that cost about $100. Also, take a look at the Extended Stay America just south of Lady Bird Lake. It’s very cheap and walkable to the hotel, although a bit on the far side.

5. Airbnb/HomeAway. You’ll find many options just to the east and south of downtown at low prices.

 

Google opens up .New: Spotify, eBay and OpenTable on board

by — Services 10 Comments

Type in a domain name to create a new Spotify playlist, sell something on eBay or open a new GitHub repository.

Image with ".new" typed on green background

Google is opening up its .new top level domain name to third parties that wish to use the domain for “action generation.”

The company started using the domain as a shortcut about a year ago. For example, if you type doc.new in your browser, it will create a new Google Doc.

Now, third parties will be able to register .new domains as long as they use them to start an action or workflow.

Some of the companies already on board include:

  • Playlist.new: Create a new playlist to add songs on Spotify.
  • Story.new: Write on Medium.
  • Sell.new: Help people get exactly what they want through eBay.
  • Reservation.new: Enter reservation.new to make an OpenTable reservation at the best restaurants near you.
  • Webex.new: For an easy, fast, and secure way to start your personal meeting room from any browser, try this shortcut from Cisco Webex.
  • Repo.new: Open new GitHub repositories and gists.

The company is running the ICANN-mandated sunrise for trademark holders through January 14. Sunrise registrations do not need to activate an action or workflow.

Companies can start applying for .new domains on December 2. They must create an action or workflow within 100 days of receiving the domain to remain in compliance.

This is one of the more innovative things a company has done with a new top level domain. It also gives emphasis to typing in domains, showing how it’s the most direct way to visit websites.

The problem, as I see it, is that it’s backwards. My wife tells me she loves the docs shortcut, but frequently types new.doc instead of doc.new.