Tucows to reanimate Tucows brand as sales flatten

Tucows has become the latest domain name company to confirm it’s experiencing the post-pandemic blues, and said that it plans to revitalize the Tucows brand.

Reporting basically flat-to-down domain numbers on Thursday night, the company said that it plans to “more closely connect the Tucows parent and the registrar brands” in the coming months.

“For more than two decades, Tucows has been synonymous with domain registration. In the coming months, you will see a stronger connection of the Tucows brand with our registrar properties, with each anchored by the rich heritage of the Tucows name,” Dave Woroch, CEO of Tucows Domains, said in prepared remarks.

It’s not clear what this will entail in practice. The company’s main brands are Hover in retail and OpenSRS and Enom in wholesale, and you’d be hard pressed to find a mention of Tucows on any of their storefronts.

First-quarter domain revenue was “essentially unchanged” from the same period a year ago, at $61.5 million compared to $61.2 million.

Retail domains revenue was down to $9.1 million from $9.2 million. While wholesale revenue was $52.5 million versus $52 million, the increase was driven by value-added services rather than domain revenue, which was basically flat.

The renewal rate was a healthy 81%.

Woroch said that domain transactions “are now settling back in at pre-pandemic levels” after the lockdown bumps experienced over the last two years. He pointed to Verisign’s recent comments to suggest these are industry trends.

Including Tucows non-domains businesses, revenue was up 14% to $81.1 million and there was an overall net loss of $3.0 million compared to a profit of $2.1 million.

Secondary market fluffs GoDaddy amid slowdown concerns

Secondary market domain sales continued to drive growth in the first quarter, GoDaddy reported this week, amid fears of slowing growth in new primary market sales.

It’s difficult to gauge exactly how well domains are selling, because the company has stopped breaking out domains as a separate revenue segment in its quarterly earnings releases.

Instead, it’s bundled domains, hosting and basic security together into a new “core platform” segment, frustrating those of us who like to see domain performance to track broader industry trends.

This “core platform” grew by 9% year-over-year in Q1, to $699.6 million, and CFO Mark McCaffrey told analysts that 40% of this growth was driven by secondary market domain sales.

“Core Platform bookings grew 5% year-over-year,” McCaffrey added. Bookings give a better indication of new sales.

A week earlier, .com registry Verisign had said that its registrars were seeing primary sales volumes growth slowing due to the easing of coronavirus restrictions that had pumped growth and general post-pandemic economic malaise.

If that is happening, GoDaddy’s secondary market sales, where it has blurred the lines between retail storefront and aftermarket sales platform in recent years, provides some insulation.

Overall, in Q1 the company saw revenue of up 11.3% at $1 billion and net income up from $10.8 million to $68.6 million.

ICANN picks 28 registries for abuse audit

ICANN has kicked off its annual compliance audit, and this time it’s focused on registries rather than registrars.

It’s picked 28 gTLDs based on whether they’ve not been fully audited before, whether they have more than 100 domains, and whether they show up a lot in abuse blocklists (excluding spam blocklists).

Only one gTLD per registry has been picked, which might be why the number is lower than previous audit rounds.

The audit will entail sending a questionnaire to each registry to ask how they are complying with each of their commitments under the Registry Agreement.

Registries have already been told if they’ve been picked. ICANN hopes to have it all wrapped up in the third quarter.

Bye-bye Alice’s Registry

One of ICANN’s oldest accredited registrars has had its contract terminated for non-payment of fees and other alleged breaches.

Alice’s Registry, which has been around since 1999, has been told it’s no longer allowed to sell gTLD domains and that whatever remains of its managed domains will be transferred to another registrar.

The termination comes at the end of more than two years of ICANN’s Compliance department pursuing AR for not paying its accreditation fees, not operating a working Whois service, not implementing RDAP, and not showing its company is in good standing.

The registrar’s web site hasn’t been working in many months, and until its accreditation was suspended last October it had not responded to ICANN’s calls and emails.

Its responses to Compliance since then did not help its case, so ICANN made the decision to terminate.

GoDaddy acquires DNAcademy

GoDaddy has acquired DNAcademy, which provides online domain-investing learning services, for an undisclosed sum.

The two companies announced yesterday that GoDaddy has not only bought the content of the DNAcadamy web site, but also the services of founder Michael Cyger, who will become GoDaddy’s first director of education.

While the deal brings DNAcademy’s content to a potentially vastly larger audience, it’s not clear that all existing customers will benefit.

Cyger posted that people currently on a $499 annual membership will have their contracts honored, but it’s still not clear what will happen to those who handed over $949 for a “lifetime” membership.

“Lifetime members: Although the DNAcademy customer base was not acquired, GoDaddy values the relationships DNAcademy cultivated with domain name investors and will make best efforts to provide access to the new offering,” he wrote.

DNAcademy is not accepting new memberships while its services are being integrated with GoDaddy Domains, which is expected to take several months.

For GoDaddy, the secondary market is now the big driver of domains revenue, contributing about two thirds of its growth last year.

The company already makes it fairly easy for its customers to list their domains for resale, and presumably it expects DNAcademy to help turn more of its millions of registrants into domainers.

101domain throttles its business in Russia

101domain has become the latest registrar to say it is limiting its business in Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company, owned by Altanovo Domains, said today it is suspending all new accounts, orders and inbound domain transfers for customers located in Russia.

It will also no longer sell or accept transfers for domains in Russian-linked TLDs .ru (including third-level names), .рф (.xn--p1ai), .МОСКВА (.xn--80adxhks), .рус (.xn--p1acf), .дети (.xn--d1acj3b), .su, and .tatar.

“We will continue to process renewals of existing services for the time being, however this may change at any time and without notice,” the company said.

101domain follows fellow registrars Namecheap, IONOS, and GoDaddy in announcing what effectively amount to commercial sanctions against Russia.

Industry bodies CENTR and ICANN, along with ccTLD registry Nominet, have also committed to concrete actions to sanction Russia and/or support Ukraine.

GoDaddy stops selling .ru domains, commits money to support Ukraine

Domain registrar market-share leader GoDaddy will no longer sell .ru domain names, and has reached into its pocket to provide financial support for Ukraine relief efforts.

In a two-pronged response to the Russian invasion, the company outlined several measures aimed at both supporting Ukraine and putting some sanction-style pressure on Russia.

It’s not kicking out existing Russian registrants, but it is, according to a statement:

• Removing the Russian version of our website
• No longer supporting new registrations of .ru and .ru.com
• Removing all .ru domain names from our domain name aftermarket
• Removing the Russian Ruble

“What’s happened in Ukraine is horrible. We do not condone the unwarranted aggression from the Russian Government,” the statement says.

For Ukrainian customers, GoDaddy is renewing their products and services due to expire in the next 60 days for free.

“Customers can also contact us at any time, and if they need something specific, we’ll help them as best we can,” the company added.

It’s also donating $500,000 to humanitarian relief in Ukraine, donation-matching its employees’ gifts, and offering to help pay its Ukrainian contractors’ salaries for the next 60 days.

Other registrars to share their support for Ukraine so far include Namecheap, Tucows, IONOS and Gandi.

Gandi says it supports Ukraine but WON’T cut off Russians

Gandi has become the latest large registrar to issue a statement about the war in Ukraine, saying that while it deplores the violence it won’t be disconnecting Russian customers.

CEO Stephan Ramoin wrote that Gandi “condemns” the invasion and is “working on supporting Ukraine, according to the suggestions of our Ukrainian tech colleagues”, adding:

The internet is about including all humanity and working toward a greater goal, giving every human being a voice and a clear vision of the world, not excluding and antagonizing one group of people against another. That’s why we want to support the people of Russia and Belarus expressing their disagreement with this war. We don’t need to escalate, war is not the answer.

Cutting off Russians and Belarusians would only encourage the creation of different closed worlds and digital networks. We have chosen to hold out our hand to these people. We are not at war with them. Only their leaders, and their madness, need to be stopped. We will of course react quickly against war propaganda of any kind.

The statement follows those coming from Namecheap and IONOS, which have both this week announced their intentions to remove most Russian and Belarusian customers.

Based in Paris, Gandi is one of the oldest registrars and has over 1.3 million gTLD domains under management.

Now IONOS kicks out Russian customers

IONOS has become the second major registrar to say it will turf out its Russian customers in response to the invasion of Ukraine.

The company’s board of directors today issued a statement expressing support for the people of Ukraine and saying:

To support worldwide sanctions on Russia, we are not accepting any new customer contracts from Russia and are also terminating existing relationships with Russian customers. This also applies to business relationships with Russian service providers and suppliers. We are currently reviewing all existing supplier contracts.

The directors said that many of their colleagues come from Ukraine and have family in the region.

It’s not immediately clear whether the ban applies to domain name registrants as well as hosting customers, and what options Russian registrants have been given. An IONOS spokesperson said the details are still being worked out.

Earlier in the week, US-based registrar Namecheap, which has its customer support based in Ukraine, gave its Russian registrants notice to transfer their names elsewhere. It later said it would offer free domains to Russian dissidents.

While a little smaller than Namecheap, IONOS is part of Germany-based United-Internet and, with over five million names, a top-10 registrar in terms of gTLD domains under management.

Namecheap offers free services to Russian dissidents

Namecheap will offer “free anonymous domain registration and free web hosting” to anti-war protest web sites based in Russia or Belarus.

The registrar said in a statement today that the move is in response to imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s call for war protests in Russia.

The offer modifies the company’s hard-line position from earlier in the week, in which it banned Russians altogether from its services and gave registrants there a week to get out.

Namecheap’s English-language customer service is based in Ukraine, including in cities under heavy bombardment this week.

Russians interested in the free hosting offer are asked to contact customer service for details.