Pandemic pushes Canadians to register domain names in record numbers.

More people registered .ca domain names last month than any month since Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) was founded in 1998.

According to CIRA, 54,129 .ca domain names were registered last month. This is 38% more than in May 2019.

Why? Thank the pandemic. Like many top level domains, .ca is benefitting from people rapidly shifting their businesses online. Website builder Wix reported a 63% surge in new accounts in April of this year compared to the same month in 2019. Tucows CEO Elliot Noss also reported a sharp increase in new registrations. In early May, Noss said:

In the last few weeks we have seen a significant bump in transactions as businesses globally try to quickly move online, and as displaced workers look to entrepreneurship as the next stage in their career paths. We saw this begin to emerge in late March and it is still going strong.

April was also a big month for CIRA. April and May combined were the biggest two months in CRIA’s history with 108,018 domains registered.