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Namecheap sues Enom and Tucows, demands transfer of 4 million domains

by — Domain Registrars 5 Comments

Namecheap says Tucows is dragging its feet on transferring domains registered through Namecheap when it was an Enom reseller.

Domain name registrar Namecheap is big, but until this year it didn’t show up on charts that rank registrars by domains. That’s because Namecheap acted as an Enom reseller, so it added to Enom’s numbers rather than its own.

Starting this year, Namecheap began registering new .com domain names on its own registrar accreditations and it generally ranks as the fifth largest registrar each month when it comes to new .com registrations.

Namecheap wants to transfer four million domains that Verisign offers (e.g. .Com, .net) that were registered at Namecheap while it was an Enom reseller from Enom’s accreditations to its own accreditations. In a lawsuit filed in Seattle this week (pdf), Namecheap alleges that Tucows, which acquired Enom earlier this year, is thwarting the effort.

The issue seems to revolve around if this transfer qualifies for a “Bulk Transfer After Partial Portfolio Acquisition”, or BTAPPA. This type of transfer was set up to transfer a bunch of domains between registrars in bulk. Click here to continue reading…

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The Latest .Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 0 Comments

Latest data shows little change.

ICANN published the latest official .com transactions report from Verisign, which includes data by registrar for May 2017.

Little has changed in the top spots, with GoDaddy leading the way and Tucows, which now includes Enom, coming in second place.

Here are the top registrars in terms of new .com registrations for May:

1. GoDaddy* 930,127
2. Tucows** 190,589
3. HiChina 145,636
4. PublicDomainRegistry 124,470
5. Namecheap 122,598

Here are the top five registrars (open to the public) for net inbound transfers during the month:

1. HiChina +18669
2. GoDaddy +9,022
3. Google +7,816
4. TurnCommerce (Namebright) +6,199
5. MAFF Inc (XZ.com) +5,920

On the flip side, these five registrars saw the biggest net outflow of .com domain names due to transfers:

1. Tucows -13,170
2. PublicDomainRegistry -6,688
3. Fabulous -4,950
4. 1&1 -4,070
5. Domain.com –3979

*Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains **Includes Tucows and ENom.

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A strong month for .com; here are the winners & losers

by — Domain Registrars 1 Comment

A strong month for .com domain name registrations.

ICANN has published the latest official .com transactions report from Verisign, which includes data by registrar for March 2017.

March was a strong one with 3.22 million new .com domain registrations. Compare this to March 2016 when there were 3.08 million new .com registrations.

The top registrars in terms of new registrations saw little movement. HiChina and PublicDomainRegistry swapped places but there were no new entrants:

1. GoDaddy* 1,044,706
2. Tucows** 243,851
3. HiChina 157,460
4. PublicDomainRegistry 131,107
5. Namecheap 130,995

Here are the top five registrars (open to the public) for net inbound transfers during the month:

1. HiChina +19,877
2. Epik +8,405
3. NameBright +8,347
4. Google +8,199
5. XZ.com +5,306

On the flip side, these five registrars saw the biggest net outflow of .com domain names due to transfers:

1. Web.com*** -10,452
2. Tucows -7,137
3. PublicDomainRegistry -5,912
4. Fabulous -5,685
5. 1&1 -4,759

*Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains **Includes Tucows and eNom *** Includes Network Solutions and Register.com, but not drop catching registrars.

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.Com Winners & Losers

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Here are the registrars that did best (and worst) with .com in February.

ICANN has published the latest official .com transactions report from Verisign, which includes data by registrar for February 2017.

Here’s a look at how the registrars fared with new registrations and transfers in February:

Here are the top 5 registrars in February in terms of new .com registrations:

1. GoDaddy* 926,603
2. Tucows** 221,287
3. PublicDomainRegistry 135,635
4. HiChina 120,756
5. Namecheap 115,376

Here are the top five registrars (open to the public) for net inbound transfers:

1. HiChina +14,679
2. Google +7,747
3. NameBright +7,445
4. NameSilo +4,955
5. Epik 4,087

On the flip side, these five registrars saw the biggest net outflow of .com domain names due to transfers:

1. GoDaddy -9,860
2. Tucows -7,031
3. Domain.com -5,631
4. 1&1 -5,450
5. Web.com*** -3,913

*Includes GoDaddy and Wild West Domains **Includes Tucows and eNom *** Includes Network Solutions and Register.com, but not drop catching registrars.

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January data show why Rightside sold eNom: Namecheap

by — Domain Registrars 3 Comments

Namecheap made a wholesale switch to its own accreditation in January.

ICANN has published data from Verisign about .com activity in January, and it reveals a good reason why Rightside sold eNom to Tucows.

Namecheap.

Namecheap has always been a big part of eNom’s business. It has historically accounted for about a quarter of eNom’s domains under management.

Namecheap has registered its domain names through the eNom reseller platform. We didn’t have exact figures on its monthly volume, even though we knew it was big.

When new TLDs came out, Namecheap started registering many of these domain names under its own registration accreditation. Then, in January this year, it started registering .com domains through its own accreditation…and landed within the top five registrars for new registrations that month with over 100,000.

This means that Rightside (NASDAQ:NAME) was about to show a big drop in revenue in Q1 of this year. Apparently, it immediately moved to sell eNom.

It found a willing buyer in Tucows (NASDAQ:TCX). On stage at NamesCon, Tucows CEO Elliot Noss said he was aware that Namecheap was moving off the platform. But that doesn’t hurt the deal from Tucows’ perspective.

Namecheap negotiated very low rates because it was so big. If you measure your business on revenue growth (as Rightside does) then losing Namecheap is a big loss. In Tucows’ case, however, it hopes to add about $20 million EBITDA/year from the business. Losing Namecheap shouldn’t negatively impact that because it was so low margin.

Here’s a look at how the registrars fared with new registrations and transfers in January: Click here to see the charts…

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